Becoming a high‐fidelity – super – imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

Abstract

In contrast to other primates, human children's imitation performance goes from low to high fidelity soon after infancy. Are such changes associated with the development of other forms of learning? We addressed this question by testing 215 children (26-59 months) on two social conditions (imitation, emulation) - involving a demonstration - and two asocial conditions (trial-and-error, recall) - involving individual learning - using two touchscreen tasks. The tasks required responding to either three different pictures in a specific picture order (Cognitive: Airplane→Ball→Cow) or three identical pictures in a specific spatial order (Motor-Spatial: Up→Down→Right). There were age-related improvements across all conditions and imitation, emulation and recall performance were significantly better than trial-and-error learning. Generalized linear models demonstrated that motor-spatial imitation fidelity was associated with age and motor-spatial emulation performance, but cognitive imitation fidelity was only associated with age. While this study provides evidence for multiple imitation mechanisms, the development of one of those mechanisms - motor-spatial imitation - may be bootstrapped by the development of another social learning skill - motor-spatial emulation. Together, these findings provide important clues about the development of imitation, which is arguably a distinctive feature of the human species.

They can interact, but can they learn? Toddlers’ transfer learning from touchscreens and television

“…Given that memory improves with age and experience (Bauer, 2007;Hartshorn et al, 1998;Hayne, 2004;Richmond & Nelson, 2007;Rovee-Collier, 1997), this finding was not surprising. These findings are also consistent with others in the imitation literature (Flynn & Whiten, 2008Herbert & Hayne, 2000;Subiaul, Patterson, Schilder, Renner, & Barr, 2015;Subiaul et al, 2012;Williams, Casey, Braadbaart, Culmer, & Mon-Williams, 2014) showing age-related increases in imitation fidelity across the preschool years. Consistent with prior research (Flynn & Whiten, 2008;Nielsen, 2006), children in the current experiment were not faithful to the demonstrated actions but rather produced a wide range of nondemonstrated actions during the test sessions.…”

The cognitive structure of goal emulation during the preschool years

“…Subiaul's (2010a,b) Multiple Imitation Mechanisms (MIM) hypothesis is a framework that proposes that the cognitive architecture of imitation does not consist of a single domain-general (e.g., associative) or domain-specific (e.g., goal, rational inference) mechanism. Extending the reasoning of MIM to emulation, we hypothesize here that like imitation, there are multiple emulation mechanisms (MEM), and predict that the cognitive architecture of emulation, like that of imitation (i.e., Subiaul et al, 2015), consists of domain-specific mechanisms that are independent of other social and asocial learning processes. However, this original framework did not, specifically, address the cognitive architecture of emulation.…”

“…Compared to most animals, humans are super imitators, mirroring others' actions across diverse domains with incredible fidelity (Subiaul, Patterson, Renner, Schilder, & Barr, 2015;Whiten, 2011). 1 These imitative abilities have been linked to humanity's prowess in the artefact domain, and our ability to develop and sustain language and culture (Boyd, Richerson, & Henrich, 2011;Lewis & Laland, 2012).…”

“…Finally, other researchers argue that imitation and emulation are mediated by distinctspecializedcognitive processes (Bellagamba et al, 2006;Subiaul et al, 2012Subiaul et al, , 2015). Subiaul's (2010a,b) Multiple Imitation Mechanisms (MIM) hypothesis is a framework that proposes that the cognitive architecture of imitation does not consist of a single domain-general (e.g., associative) or domain-specific (e.g., goal, rational inference) mechanism.…”

“…We define cognitive structure as the association, organization, or grouping of different learning or cognitive processes. We tested preschoolers as there are significant developmental changes in social learning during this time (e.g., Dickerson et al, 2013;Subiaul et al, 2015). Subiaul et al (2015) showed that cognitive and motor-spatial imitation development was predicted by few to no other types of learning (see Figure 2).…”