The peer model advantage in infants’ imitation of familiar gestures performed by differently aged models

Infants’ imitation of differently aged models has been predominately investigated with object-related actions and so far has lead to mixed evidence. Whereas some studies reported an increased likelihood of imitating peer models in contrast to adult models, other studies reported the opposite pattern of results. In the present study, 14-month-old infants were presented with four familiar gestures (e.g., clapping) that were demonstrated by differently aged televised models (peer, older child, adult). Results revealed that infants were more likely to imitate the peer model than the older child or the adult. This result is discussed with respect to a social function of imitation and the mechanism of imitating familiar behavior

Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach

In their widely noticed study, Gergely, Bekkering, and Király (2002) showed that 14-month-old infants imitated an unusual action only if the model freely chose to perform this action and not if the choice of the action could be ascribed to external constraints. They attributed this kind of selective imitation to the infants' capacity of understanding the principle of rational action. In the current paper, we present evidence that a simpler approach of perceptual distraction may be more appropriate to explain their results. When we manipulated the saliency of context stimuli in the two original conditions, the results were exactly opposite to what rational imitation predicts. Based on these findings, we reject the claim that the notion of rational action plays a key role in selective imitation in 14-month-olds

Is It Rational to Assume that Infants Imitate Rationally? A Theoretical Analysis and Critique

It has been suggested that preverbal infants evaluate the efficiency of others' actions (by applying a principle of rational action) and that they imitate others' actions rationally. The present contribution presents a conceptual analysis of the claim that preverbal infants imitate rationally. It shows that this ability rests on at least three assumptions: that infants are able to perceive others' action capabilities, that infants reason about and conceptually represent their own bodies, and that infants are able to think counterfactually. It is argued that none of these three abilities is in place during infancy. Furthermore, it is shown that the idea of a principle of rational action suffers from two fallacies. As a consequence, is it suggested that it is not rational to assume that infants imitate rationally. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

Seeing touches early in life

Addabbo M, Longhi E, Bolognini N, et al. Seeing touches early in life. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(9): e0134549

When the Transmission of Culture Is Child's Play

Background: Humans frequently engage in arbitrary, conventional behavior whose primary purpose is to identify with cultural in-groups. The propensity for doing so is established early in human ontogeny as children become progressively enmeshed in their own cultural milieu. This is exemplified by their habitual replication of causally redundant actions shown to them by adults. Yet children seemingly ignore such actions shown to them by peers. How then does culture get transmitted intra-generationally? Here we suggest the answer might be 'in play'. Principal Findings: Using a diffusion chain design preschoolers first watched an adult retrieve a toy from a novel apparatus using a series of actions, some of which were obviously redundant. These children could then show another child how to open the apparatus, who in turn could show a third child. When the adult modeled the actions in a playful manner they were retained down to the third child at higher rates than when the adult seeded them in a functionally oriented way. Conclusions: Our results draw attention to the possibility that play might serve a critical function in the transmission of human culture by providing a mechanism for arbitrary ideas to spread between children

Links between Autistic Traits, Feelings of Gender Dysphoria, and Mentalising Ability: Replication and Extension of Previous Findings from the General Population

Gender nonconformity is substantially elevated in the autistic population, but the reasons for this are currently unclear. In a recent study, Kallitsounaki and Williams (2020; authors 1 and 2 of the current paper) found significant relations between autistic traits and both gender dysphoric feelings and recalled cross-gender behaviour, and between mentalising ability and gender dysphoric feelings. The current study successfully replicated these findings (results were supplemented with Bayesian analyses), in sample of 126 adults. Furthermore, it extended the previous finding of the role of mentalising in the relation between autistic traits and gender dysphoric feelings, by showing that mentalising fully mediated this link. Results provide a potential partial explanation for the increased rate of gender nonconformity in the autistic population

Selective imitation in one-year-olds : how a model's characteristics influence imitation

This dissertation investigated how characteristics of models influence imitation in one-year-old infants. In particular, we investigated the impact of a model’s age when performing novel and familiar behaviour as well as complete and incomplete behaviour. Moreover, we further examined the influence of a model’s reliability on imitation. In Experiment 1 we tested whether infants were able to detect differences in the rationality of a novel action when the models were televised. In Experiment 2 we investigated how a model’s age influences infants’ tendency to imitate depending on whether novel behaviour (Experiment 2a: illuminating a lamp by using the head) or familiar behaviour (Experiment 2b: performing body movements) were presented. The motivation for conducting Experiment 3 was twofold. The first part of Experiment 3 addressed the question of whether the type of behaviour and time of coding imitative behaviour influenced the findings of Experiment 2b. The second part of Experiment 3 explored how 14-month-olds re-enact failed attempts of familiar object-directed actions from differently aged models. Finally, Experiment 4 investigated whether infants imitate reliable models more often than unreliable models when observing novel behaviour. To summarise, these results of these experiments indicate that infants are remarkably flexible imitators. Two distinct motivations interact with a model’s characteristics in imitation tasks: that is, besides the motivation to learn novel behaviour from reliable adults via imitation, infants use imitation of familiar behaviour in order to interact socially with peers

Discrimination between real-time and delayed visual feedback of self-performed leg movements in the first year of life

The current study investigated the role of timing on infant self-perception. We tested whether 3-, 6- and 9-month-olds are able to discriminate between real-time and delayed visual feedback of their leg movements. Infants watched their legs simultaneously on two monitors. Initially both monitors presented their legs in real time. After 60 seconds one monitor switched to the presentation of visual feedback delayed by 3 seconds. Preferential looking was coded. Three-month-olds looked equally long at both displays. Although, the 6-month-olds tended to look longer at the delayed presentation, only the 9-month-old infants significantly preferred the delayed video display, indicating that they detected the difference in the timing of the feedback. This finding suggests that the use of timing in self-perception becomes increasingly robust by the end of the first year of life