The Relationship between Ability Level and Task Difficulty in Producing Imitation in Infants

Harnick, Frances S.

doi:10.2307/1128610

Cited by 40 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…When the goal was made explicit at the beginning of the trial (e.g., the experimenter showed the children that the box could open before demonstrating how to do so), more children completed the overall goal of the demonstration; however, they were less likely to reproduce the exact style the experimenter used to complete the steps of the task (e.g., the exact twisting movement used to remove a pin). Older results of Harnick (1978) and Sibulkin and Uzgiris (1978) are compatible with these findings, showing that children between 14 months and 4 years were more likely to imitate a model's exact action when a task involved many steps that might make the goal difficult to interpret versus when the solution was obvious.…”

supporting

confidence: 59%

Prior experiences and perceived efficacy influence 3-year-olds' imitation.

Williamson¹,

Meltzoff²,

Markman³

2008

Developmental Psychology

115

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Children are selective and flexible imitators. They combine their own prior experiences and the perceived causal efficacy of the model to determine whether and what to imitate. In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to have either a difficult or an easy experience achieving a goal. They then saw an adult use novel means to achieve the goal. Children with a difficult prior experience were more likely to imitate the adult's precise means. Experiment 2 showed further selectivitychildren preferentially imitated causally efficacious versus nonefficacious acts. In Experiment 3, even after an easy prior experience led children to think their own means would be effective, they still encoded the novel means performed by the model. When a subsequent manipulation rendered the children's means ineffective, children recalled and imitated the model's means. The research shows that children integrate information from their own prior interventions and their observations of others to guide their imitation.

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supporting

confidence: 59%

Prior experiences and perceived efficacy influence 3-year-olds' imitation.

Williamson¹,

Meltzoff²,

Markman³

2008

Developmental Psychology

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It might be that simple actions directly induce object aVordances, thereby detracting attention to body movement. Bauer and Kleinknecht (2002) reported Wndings relevant to this hypothesis (see also Harnick, 1978). Reanalyzing the data from the study of Bauer (1992, Experiment 2), Bauer and Kleinknecht (2002) found that 20-month-olds diVerentially copied the demonstration according to task demands.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Gradations of emulation learning in infants’ imitation of actions on objects

Huang

Charman

2005

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

107

118

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“…Thus, children of all ages (and indeed adults) may both imitate and emulate, and other factors, notably task or domain knowledge, determine which mechanism operates. However, note that children of the same age have never displayed an ability to imitate and to emulate in a single study ( possible exceptions being the confounded results of Harnick, 1978 andSibulkin &Uzgiris, 1978). Furthermore, evidence contrary to the idea of context specificity was obtained by Nagell et al (1993).…”

Section: The Literature On the Social Learning Of Tool Use In Human Cmentioning

confidence: 92%

How do children ape? Applying concepts from the study of non‐human primates to the developmental study of ‘imitation’ in children

Want

Harris

2002

Developmental Science

242

231

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We highlight two aspects of research into social learning that have been neglected in existing developmental research, namely:(1) The role of social learning in learning to use tools, and (2) Whether children's social learning involves copying the actions themselves ('blind' imitation or mimicry), or alternatively, the effects of those actions (emulation). In Part I of the paper we argue that the failure to distinguish between these different mechanisms is closely related to the lack of research on the social transmission of tool use and that both omissions limit our understanding of early social learning. We conclude Part I by outlining the requirements for an adequate study of these two issues. In Part II, we use this analysis to critically examine data from existing developmental research with children. We also assess the data currently available in the comparative literature which address these issues more directly. We conclude that children learn only what actions to perform via observation ('blind' imitation or mimicry), and not why those actions are effective (emulation). We close by identifying important potential pitfalls and unresolved questions for the future study of the social learning of actions on objects.

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The Relationship between Ability Level and Task Difficulty in Producing Imitation in Infants

Cited by 40 publications

References 9 publications

Prior experiences and perceived efficacy influence 3-year-olds' imitation.

Prior experiences and perceived efficacy influence 3-year-olds' imitation.

Gradations of emulation learning in infants’ imitation of actions on objects

How do children ape? Applying concepts from the study of non‐human primates to the developmental study of ‘imitation’ in children

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