Perceptual Development: Imitation

Definition

Imitation occurs when three conditions are met. It requires that the imitator: (1) perceives the act of another, (2) repeats that act, and (3) does so with the goal of matching what was perceived. Accidental mirroring (e.g., people slipping on the same icy street) is not imitation. Imitation requires perception of the model; and it requires that the perceived act becomes a target or goal the imitator is striving to match.

Childhood Imitation

Traditional theories of human development underestimated human infants' capacity to imitate. In the classic developmental theory of Jean Piaget, there were six stages of imitative development. Piaget postulated that young infants lacked the cognitive capacity to match facial gestures. More recent experiments established that newborns can imitate simple facial gestures, such as poking out their tongues and opening and closing their mouths. Detailed motor analyses show that they correct their behavior, honing in on an accurate match. This indicates that infants are using cross-modal perception to imitate. The adult body movement is the target, and infants use proprioceptive feedback from their own unseen movements to guide their motor system to match the movement of the visual target.

Imitation would be of limited utility if it was restricted to direct mimicry of events in the immediate perceptual field. Research shows that infants can imitate from memory. In one study, 14-month-old infants saw an adult perform a novel action, but were not given the object. They returned to the laboratory 24 hours later and were handed the toys. Videotaped records showed imitation of the absent [Page 749]act from memory. Children not only imitate real people, but images on television. However, infants are poorer at imitating from television. It may be that the television is not sufficiently social to elicit maximal imitation; alternatively children have a difficulty using a two-dimensional (2-D) representation to guide their three-dimensional (3-D) actions, a transfer of learning problem.

After infancy, television becomes a potent source of models for children, and there is concern about learning violence from perceptual exposure via television. Older children learn not only concrete motor behaviors, but also more abstract information from television and live models. For example, preschool children preferentially imitate same-sex models. Thus, imitation is a mechanism for learning gender roles—how girls (or boys) act in a particular culture.

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