Week 5 - Imitation Flashcards
Relevant Background: What were Piaget’s early approaches to imitation
Capacity for imitation develops GRADUALLY
0-6m : little imitation capacity
8-10m : progress in imitative ability
–> 9-10m @ interpretation of behaviours as imitative are illusionary
18024m : delayed imitation emerges
Piaget observed his own daughter JAQUELINE
–> 5 months: sticking tongue out continued while Piaget did the same (but: only temporary)
–> 6 months: Piaget waved goodbye, child stuck out tongue and put thumb in it
(concept: cross modal/intermodal matching - the ability to recognise an object initially inspected with one modality via another modality)
Piaget CONCLUDED THAT
0-8 months
- Little imitation, infants can imitate actions already in their repertoire, inability for inter-modal matching
8 months
- Establishing of connections between what child sees on model and cannot see on herself, when father stops - child imitates, first true imitation - infants can imitate NOVEL gestures
18-24 months
- Capacity for deferred (delayed) imitation
- Eg. Jacqueline can imitate a friend’s actions a day later
- Capacity for representation appears (end of sensorimotor period)
Relevant Background: What did Meltzoff believe about imitation
Meltzoff believed that infants’ imitative competence was UNDERESTIMATED
–> Infants much younger can imitate facial and manual gestures
Meltzoff and Moore (1977) Experiment: Aims
To EXPERIMENTALLY investigate imitation with an emphasis on:
–> Experimenter bias (infants’ responses videotaped and scored by ‘blind’ observers)
–> Controlling child-parent interaction (parents told about aim of study ONLY at the end)
–> True imitation vs global arousal response (if there’s something in the environment that makes the child respond –> each infant’s response toa gesture is compared to their response to another similar gesture)
They did this through TWO EXPERIMENTS - the second to control for the experimenter reacting to infant
Experiment: Participants
Experiment 1:
–> 6 infants (3M and 3F) - 12-17 days old
Experiment 2:
–> 12 infants (6F and 6M) - 16-21 days old
Experiment: Procedure 1
- Experimenter presents infant with “passive face” (90 seconds)
–> unreactive, lip closed, neutral facials expression - Infant is then shown 4 gestures in a random order:
–> lip protrusion, mouth opening, tongue protrusion, sequential finger movement (15 seconds each) - Response period - experimenter stops and resumes passive face (20-second)
Findings: Experiment 1
Undergraduate volunteers record response periods
- 2 groups: 1 recording facial responses, 1 recording manual - 6 coders each)
ranked frequency of gestures shown by the infant
–> Gesture shown to the infant was the gesture imitated the most
(Imitation of other gestures remained)
ISSUE: did the infant imitate the experimenter, or did the experimenter (unwittingly) imitate the infant
Experiment: Procedure 2
- Infant sucked on dummy and experimenter showed a “passive face”
- Dummy removed - 150 second baseline period
- Dummy inserted - experimenter showed gesture (15 seconds)
–> mouth opening, tongue protrusion (conditions) - Dummy removed - 150 second response period with the experimenter passive face
Findings Procedure 2
Undergraduate ‘blindly’ recorded response periods
–> Ranked frequency of gestures shown by infant
–> KEY RESULT: the neonates imitated both tongue protrusion and mouth opening
Overall Conclusions AND Finding Interpretations
Early accounts of imitation –> underestimate age
Meltzoff and Moore:
–> infants imitate gestures from 12 days of age –> even in lack of outside ifluences (eg. parents’ influence) –> this is CONTRARY TO THE BEHAVIOURIST VIEW
Interpretations
1. Innate Releasing Mechanism (Disproved)
–> Gestures are like fixed-action patterns released by a sign-stimulus
–> Response is fixed and stereotypic, time locked, and evolutionary
–> BUT: range of gestures are imitated, not fixed, not time locked, not just tongue/lip/mouth/finger
- Active Intermodal Mapping (AIM)
–> imitation is intentional, goal-directed intermodal matching
–> imitation is a matching-to-target process
–> infants self-produced movements provide feedback that can be compared with the visual target - Early learning from social interaction
–> Mimicry
–> Social identification
Debate: Replicability
Mixed findings continue
Example: Oostenbroeack et al. (2016) –> 100 young infants: imitation is a by-product of arousal (towards the environment)
Controversy - Mixed Findings
Piaget (and late researchers): no convincing evidence for imitation until approx. 8 months
BUT
Meltzoff and Moore - infants born with innate ability for imitation
Impact: Scientific Contributions
Insight into the development of imitation
–> Newborn: focused on the ACT
–> 6 week old: focus on the identity of the target
–> 14 month old: recognises interaction as a matching game - tests whether they are being copied
–> 18 month old: can imitate an inferred act
Impact: Developmental Changes + Follow-Up Studies
Developmental Changes
Meltzoff (1995)
* Adult tries but fails to perform an act on an object
- Eg. box and stick, square and post
* Infants imitated what adult was attempting to do (rather than what they did)
–> Imitation has developed: infants see in terms of goals and intentions of target
BEGINNINGS OF THEORY OF MIND
Follow-Up Study: Gergely et al. (2002)
* 14 months olds
* Infants observe an adult switching on a “light box” with her head - the adult’s hands are occupied or free
* In the “hands occupied” condition the infants tended to switch on the light box with their hands
* In the “hands free” condition they tended to switch it on with their heads
* The infants reasoned that the adults must have intended to use head as hands were free - hence ‘rational imitation’
- Infants REASON/INFER what the adult is trying to do
Legacy: Implications
Implications in cognitive science (memory and development)
Implications for early learning and parenting
Implications for brain science - mirror neurons
–> Pre-motor neurons that fire when an animal acts and observes an action being performed (found in humans and monkeys)
–> Might help our understanding of ToM, empathy etc.
