Imitation of hierarchical action structure by young children

Abstract

To provide the first systematic test of whether young children will spontaneously perceive and imitate hierarchical structure in complex actions, a task was devised in which a set of 16 elements can be modelled through either of two different, hierarchically organized strategies. Three-year-old children showed a strong and significant tendency to copy whichever of the two hierarchical approaches they witnessed an adult perform. Responses to an element absent in demonstrations, but present at test, showed that children did not merely copy the chain of events they had witnessed, but acquired hierarchically structured rules to which the new element was assimilated. Consistent with this finding, children did not copy specific sequences of actions at lower hierarchical levels.

Kinematic Measures of Imitation Fidelity in Primary School Children

“…Research in children has since continued to study imitation as an essential aspect of cognitive development that develops in the first years of life, in neonates (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977) and with the development of deferred imitation that occurs in the first year (Meltzoff, 1988). More recently, researchers have begun to explore the utility of cognitive mechanisms in imitation such as causal understanding, hierarchical thinking and secondary representation (Flynn & Whiten, 2008;Horner & Whiten, 2005;Nielson., Dissanayake, 2004;Want & Harris, 2001;Want & Harris, 2002;Whiten, Flynn, Brown, & Lee, 2006). Selectivity of imitation has also become a topic of interest as some children imitate actions that are unnecessary to achieve a goal.…”

Imitation as an Element of Social Interaction of Children with Down Syndrome at School

“…Such stance is consistent with those adopted by several researchers who promote the improvement of relationships among peers as one of the main objectives of inclusion: motivation of acts of comprehension and understanding of differences on the part of peers and teachers (Del Prette;Del Prette, 2005). Several authors mention that children with regular development prefer to imitate adult behavior in order to meet a specific goal (Huang, Heyes & Charman, 2006;McGuigan, Whiten, Flynn & Horner, 2007;Whiten, Flynn, Brown & Lee, 2006). Children do that because they want to get socially involved and show that they are similar to the others around them (Nielson, 2006;Nielsen & Carpenter, 2008).…”

Minimalist plans for interpreting manipulation actions

“…There is evidence of action planning in the human brain. Infants have been shown to have the faculty to identify and recreate actions in a hierarchy [9]. We suggest that the grammar of human actions is more than a grammar, and must fundamentally involve planning with a hierarchy of plans arising out of some kind of minimalist plans.…”

“…We suggest that the grammar of human actions is more than a grammar, and must fundamentally involve planning with a hierarchy of plans arising out of some kind of minimalist plans. Minimal plans also explain 'compositionality', or the ability to understand larger activities based on smaller learned actions, an ability which infants have been observed to have [9]. Most importantly, using minimal plans explains the filtering out of a lot of perceptual data because the goal of a small plan helps the human to focus on particular sub-actions, by observing the changes in the universe due to the visible consequences of earlier actions.…”