Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 91, Issue 4, Pages 297-314Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2005.02.001
Keywords
deferred imitation; immediate imitation; practice; novel tester; social content; infancy; development of imitation
Funding
- NIMH NIH HHS [MH32307] Funding Source: Medline
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Infants increasingly generalize deferred imitation across environmental contexts between 6 and 18 months of age. In three experiments with 126 6-, 9-, 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds, we examined the role of the social context in deferred imitation. One experimenter demonstrated target actions on a hand puppet, and a second experimenter tested imitation 24 h later. When the second experimenter was novel, infants did not exhibit deferred imitation at any age; when infants were preexposed to the second experimenter, all of them did. Imitating immediately after the demonstration also facilitated deferred imitation in a novel social context at all ages but 6 months. Infants' pervasive failure to exhibit deferred imitation in a novel social context may reflect evolutionary selection pressures that favored conservative behavior in social animals. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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