Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: The goal-directed imitation theory suggests that imitation involves representing an observed action as a set of components hierarchically specified from major to less important goals. Given limited resources, children simplify the ways to reenact the major goal (Bekkering et al., 2000). Under this logic, two experiments were conducted to examine goal-directed imitation at 16 months of age. In both experiments, on each trial, the task consisted of one target disk and one nontarget disk that were visually identical and could be pushed downward. A beeper was activated when the action was performed on the target disk. In Experiment 1, infants saw an experimenter pushed the target disk to induce the beeping with unimanual ipsilateral or contralateral hand movement. In each case the experimenter’s hand and the disk side on which he applied force were spatially compatible in half of the trials and spatially incompatible in the other half. During ipsilateral trials a faithful copy was observed regardless of compatibility. To reproduce the pressing and its effects in contralateral trials, infants substituted contralateral compatible for ipsilateral incompatible responses, and contralateral incompatible for ipsilateral compatible responses. Nonetheless, infants were similarly likely to reenact the manipulatory act itself with the nontarget disk, except for ipsilateral compatible trials. In Experiment 2, the nontarget disk was made unmovable. Infants saw before the demonstration the experimenter either push the nontarget disk unsuccessfully (intention condition) or rub the same disk side (adult-manipulation control). An improvement in target choice was found in both the intention and adult-manipulation conditions, presumably because infants learned about differences between the two stimuli rather than about the experimenter’s intentional stance. While it may not be possible here to identify how much goal-directed imitation diverts to a simplified version of the original act, it is striking that substitution of contralateral for ipsilateral hand paths enables flexible adjustment of spatially compatible and spatially incompatible responding.