Imitation from television by 24-and 30-month-olds

Infants' imitation of complex actions was examined in three experiments with 24- and 30-month-olds. In all experiments, an adult modeled a series of actions with novel stimuli and the infant's reproduction of those actions was assessed either immediately or after a 24-hour delay. Some infants watched the demonstration live, while other infants watched the same demonstration on television from a pre-recorded videotape. Both 24- and 30-month-olds imitated actions that had been modeled on television; however, their performance was consistently inferior to that of infants of the same age who watched the demonstration live.