The role of person and object in eliciting early imitation

Legerstee, Maria

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(91)90086-8

Cited by 171 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…However, it has been found that newborns and young infants in the first half-year can match certain facial movements that they see. Tongue protrusion has been the most commonly reported example, but over the past 15 years, imitation of a wide range of other simple gestures has been documented, including lip, head, and hand movements (Abravanel & DeYong, 1991;Abravanel & Sigafoos, 1984;Field et al, 1983;Field, Goldstein, Vaga-Lahr, & Porter, 1986;Field, Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982;Fontaine, 1984;Heimann, 1989;Heimann, Nelson, & Schaller, 1989;Heimann & Schaller, 1985;Jacobson, 1979;Kaitz, Meschulach-Sarfaty, Auerbach, & Eidelman, 1988;Legerstee, 1991;Maratos, 1982;Meltzoff & Moore, 1977, 1992Reissland, 1988;Vinter, 1986). These results call into question the psychological processes that were postulated as the mechanism for connecting self and other.…”

Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 60%

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Meltzoff¹,

Moore²

2002

Infant Behavior and Development

135

152

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Imitation was tested both immediately and after a 24-hr retention interval in 6-week-old infants. The results showed immediate imitation, which replicates past research, and also imitation from memory, which is new. The latter finding implicates recall memory and establishes that 6-weekolds can generate actions on the basis of stored representations. The motor organization involved in imitation was investigated through a microanalysis of the matching response. Results revealed that infants gradually modified their behavior towards more accurate matches over successive trials. It is proposed that early imitation serves a social identity function. Infants are motivated to imitate after a 24-hr delay as a means of clarifying whether the person they see before them is the same one they previously encountered. They use the reenactment of a person's behavior to probe whether this is the same person. In the domain of inanimate objects, infants use physical manipulations (e.g., shaking) to perform this function. Imitation is to understanding people as physical manipulation is to understanding things. Motor imitation, the behavioral reenactment of things people do, is a primitive means of understanding and communicating with people. Keywordsimitation; memory; mental representation; faces; cross-modal; motor coordination; self; identity; communication; theory of mind; development Children learn by watching adults. Young children often do as parents do instead of as parents say, suggesting that visual models exert a powerful influence on children's actions. In infancy, before language, imitation plays an especially prominent role: It is an avenue for teaching motor skills and also embodies a mutuality and reciprocity that is the essence of communication at the nonverbal level. As apparently simple and commonplace as imitation is, it presents some of the deepest puzzles for theories of infancy. In order to imitate, the child must see the adult's actions, use this visual perception as a basis for an action plan, and execute the motor output. Thus, imitation taps perception, cross-modal coordination, and motor control. If imitation takes place after a significant delay, memory is also involved. The type of memory indexed by imitation is not merely recognition memory, because the infant is doing more than seeing a pattern as familiar or novel. The infant must generate an action on the basis of a memory, thus illustrating a primitive form of nonverbal recall memory (Mandler, 1990;Meltzoff, 1985Meltzoff, , 1988aMeltzoff, , 1990b.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Andrew N. Meltzoff, Department of Psychology (WJ-10), University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe rich psychological web in which imitation is situated-learning, communication, perception-action links, memory, and representation-has made it an enduring topic in developmental psychology (Baldwin, 1906;Piaget, 1962) and an issue in philosophy of...

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Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 60%

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Meltzoff¹,

Moore²

2002

Infant Behavior and Development

135

152

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“…The results showed that 2-to 3-week-old infants imitated the gestures in the subsequent response period. Other studies have also reported early imitation when the gesture is no longer visible (Fontaine, 1984;Heimann, Nelson, Schaller, 1989;Heimann & Schaller, 1985;Legerstee, 1991;Meltzoff & Moore, 1989, 1997. Young infants have also been shown to imitate across longer delays.…”

Section: Deferred Imitation In the Firstmentioning

confidence: 95%

Object representation, identity, and the paradox of early permanence: Steps toward a new framework

Meltzoff¹,

Moore²

1998

Infant Behavior and Development

137

104

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The sensorimotor theory of infancy has been overthrown, but there is little consensus on a replacement. We hypothesize that a capacity for representation is the starting point for infant development, not its culmination. Logical distinctions are drawn between object representation, identity, and permanence. Modern experiments on early object permanence and deferred imitation suggest: (a) even for young infants, representations persist over breaks in sensory contact, (b) numerical identity of objects (Os) is initially specified by spatiotemporal criteria (place and trajectory), (c) featural and functional identity criteria develop, (d) events are analyzed by comparing representations to current perception, and (e) representation operates both prospectively, anticipating future contacts with an O, and retrospectively, reidentifying an O as the "same one again." A model of the architecture and functioning of the early representational system is proposed. It accounts for young infants' behavior toward absent people and things in terms of their efforts to determine the identity of objects. Our proposal is developmental without denying innate structure and elevates the power of perception and representation while being cautious about attributing complex concepts to young infants. Keywordsrepresentation; object identity; object permanence; imitation; cognitive development; memory The field of infant psychology is in crisis. There is no longer a shared framework or set of assumptions about the nature of infancy. This crisis has been brewing for about 30 years. It began with the overthrow of the view that the infant is a purely sensorimotor organism. It continues today because there is no new consensus on how we should conceive of the infant mind.The classical sensorimotor view of infancy was founded on two key assumptions. The first was that there was a primacy to the role of action. In early infancy, to "know" an object was to act upon it. Development derived from relating actions to one another and to consequences in the perceptual world (sensorymotor connections). The second assumption was that a lack of sensory contact, in particular invisibility, was an insurmountable problem Copyright © 1998 Ablex Publishing Corporation Andrew N. Meltzoff, Department of Psychology, Box 357920, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. 7 Unlike Experiment 1, there were no problems of motor noise correlated with the one-vs. two-object movements, nor surface similarities between the habituation and test displays to serve as a basis for generalization (Spelke et al., 1995, p. 123 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript for young infants. When sensory contact with objects was lost, objects ceased to exist for the infant. The eventual development of representation was postulated as the way children transcended stimulus-driven reactions and escaped the tyranny of the here-and-now world of infancy. Piaget provided a detailed theory of this kind (Piaget, 1952(Piaget, , 1954(Piaget, , 1962.The ...

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“…Infants selectively imitate faces, but not objects such as puppets (Legerstee, 1991); they only give full greeting responses to people, not inanimate objects (Tronick, 1989). 4 Preverbal infants as young as three months appear capable of assessing social behavior, showing a preference for individuals who reliably help others (i.e., trustworthy individuals) versus those who hinder others' behavior and are thus less predictable (e.g., Hamlin et al, 2010).…”

Section: Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaffoldings of the affective mind

Colombetti¹,

Krueger

2014

Philosophical Psychology

230

184

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In this paper we adopt Sterelny's (2010) framework of the scaffolded mind, and its related dimensional approach, to highlight the many ways in which human affectivity (and not just cognition) is environmentally supported. After discussing the relationship between the scaffolded-mind view and related frameworks, such as the "extended-mind" view, we illustrate the many ways in which our affective states are environmentally supported by items of material culture, other people, and their interplay. To do so, we draw on empirical evidence from various disciplines (sociology, ethnography, developmental psychology), and develop phenomenological considerations to distinguish different ways in which we experience the world in affectivity. Sterelny's Scaffolded MindSterelny (2010) distinguishes various dimensions of what he calls the scaffolded mind. This term refers to the idea that the mind is "environmentally supported," more specifically that 2 cognitive agents engineer their environment to sustain as well as amplify their cognitive abilities. Sterelny in particular draws on the niche-construction model (Odling-Smee et al., 2003) to characterize the scaffolded mind. According to this model, organisms carve out environmental niches to which they then adapt; in this way, processes of manipulation of the environment feed back onto the manipulating organism and transform it, often increasing the organism's chances of survival. A classic example of niche construction is the dam-building activity of the beaver, which changes the environment where the beaver lives, which in turn affects the beaver's behavior and that of its progeny.Niche construction comes in different varieties (Sterelny, 2003, chapter 8). For example, organisms physically modify their habitat, constructing structures (e.g. shelters, nests, dams) that modify how the environment impacts on them. Social organization is also a form of niche construction, for it creates a certain set of conditions that change the selective landscape. What Sterelny (2010) calls the scaffolded mind refers to processes of epistemic niche construction characteristic of human agency, consisting primarily in making cognitive tools and assembling informational resources to scaffold intelligent action: written language, mathematical notations, calendars, watches, telescopes, computers, etc. Moreover, in the human case, environmental scaffolding exerts its influence across generations in a particularly profound way, via the transmission of ecological and technical expertise (what Sterenly calls "intergenerational social learning"; see also Sterelny, 2012).Sterelny introduces the scaffolded-mind view as an alternative to the extended-mind view (ExM henceforth), first formulated by Clark & Chalmers (1998) and further elaborated by Andy Clark and others (e.g., Clark, 2008;Menary, 2010b). According to ExM, sometimes the material vehicles that realize the mind encompass not just neural or even bodily activity, but also that of the material environment. Sterelny does not reject ExM, b...

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The role of person and object in eliciting early imitation

Cited by 171 publications

References 25 publications

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Object representation, identity, and the paradox of early permanence: Steps toward a new framework

Scaffoldings of the affective mind

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