Copying actions and copying outcomes: social learning through the second year

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: Online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task

Adults infer others' communicative intentions, or lack thereof, from various types of information. Young children may be initially limited to attributions based on a small set of ostensive signals. It is unknown when richer pragmatic inferences about communicative intentions emerge in development. We sought novel type of evidence for such inferences in 17-to-19-month-olds. We hypothesized that toddlers recognize adults' smartphone use in face-to-face interactions as incongruous with ostension and would rely on this interpretation when inferring the communicative intention of a model in a new imitation task conducted entirely online, dubbed the Sock Ball Task. In Experiment 1 with a between-subject design, we tested the hypothesis by assessing toddlers' (N = 48) imitation of sub-efficient means and the goal-outcome presented by a model, who interrupted her ostensive demonstration either by using a smartphone or by fiddling with her wristwatch, depending on the condition. We expected toddlers to imitate the sub-efficient means more faithfully in the wristwatch condition than in the smartphone condition. But there was no significant effect of condition on imitation of neither means nor goal. Thus, our hypothesis was not borne out by the results. In Experiment 2, using a within-subject design, we first assessed toddlers' (N = 24) performance in a no-demonstration baseline and then again after a no-disruption ostensive demonstration. In all three conditions with ostensive demonstration (Experiment 1: smartphone, wristwatch; Experiment 2: no-disruption), toddlers produced the demonstrated sub-efficient means significantly above the baseline level. In the no-disruption condition, goals were also imitated significantly above the baseline level. We conclude that the Sock Ball Task is a valid research tool for studying toddler imitation of novel means actions with objects. We end by discussing suggestions for improving the task in future studies.

Imitation fidelity increases with age in boys, but not in girls: An intriguing finding in a cohort of children aged 3 to 6 years

Imitation that entails faithful reproduction of demonstrated behavior by reenacting a sequence of actions accurately is a fast and efficient way to acquire new skills as well as to conform to social norms. Previous studies reported that both culture and gender might impinge on young children's fidelity of imitation. We analyzed the imitative behavior of 87 children whose ages ranged from 3 to 6 years. An instrumental task was administered that offered partial (opaque apparatus) or total (transparent apparatus) information about causal connection between the demonstrated actions and their effect in achieving a desired reward. Imitative fidelity (imitating the actions that were demonstrated by an adult model yet were unnecessary for achieving the instrumental goal) increased as a function of age in boys, whereas no differences were found in girls. This lack of increase in girls can be ascribed to their displaying higher degrees of imitation fidelity at an earlier age.

Fine Motor Skills, a Surrogate of Motor Planning Ability, at Age 2 Predict Social Skills at Age 6

OBJECTIVES

Motor planning is the cognitive process of planning necessary steps for achieving a purposeful movement and is specifically reflected through object manipulation. This study aimed to investigate whether fine motor skills, a surrogate of the motor planning ability of object manipulation, in early childhood are associated with later social skills, in a general-population birth cohort.

METHODS

A total of 913 children, participating in the Hamamatsu Birth Cohort for Mothers and Children, were enrolled. Social skills were measured using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II, Socialization domain, at age 6 years. Fine motor skills were measured using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning at 14, 24, and 32 months. The associations between fine motor skills at ages 14, 24, and 32 months and social skills at age 6 years were tested separately through multivariable linear regression after adjusting for covariates, including gross motor and language skills at the contemporaneous age, autistic symptoms at age 6 years, and demographic factors.

RESULTS

Fine motor skills at 24 and 32 months were significantly associated with social skills at age 6 years (at 24 months: nonstandardized regression coefficient = 1.38 [95% CI, 0.50-2.26], p = 0.002; at 32 months: 1.47 [0.56-2.38], p = 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Fine motor skills in early childhood predicted social skills at age 6 years, indicating an association between the complex motor planning ability of object manipulation and later social skills. Children who demonstrate fine motor delay at as early an age as 2 years should be closely monitored by child professionals.

Interparental Positivity Spillover Theory: How Parents' Positive Relational Interactions Influence Children

Interparental interactions have an important influence on child well-being and development. Yet prior theory and research have primarily focused on interparental conflict as contributing to child maladjustment, which leaves out the critical question of how interparental positive interactions-such as expressed gratitude, capitalization, and shared laughter-may benefit child growth and development. In this article, we integrate theory and research in family, relationship, and affective science to propose a new framework for understanding how the heretofore underexamined positive interparental interactions influence children: interparental positivity spillover theory (IPST). IPST proposes that, distinct from the influence of conflict, interparental positive interactions spill over into children's experiences in the form of their (a) experience of positive emotions, (b) beneficially altered perceptions of their parents, and (c) emulation of their parents' positive interpersonal behaviors. This spillover is theorized to promote beneficial cognitive, behavioral, social, and physiological outcomes in children in the short term (i.e., immediately after a specific episode of interparental positivity, or on a given day) as well as cumulatively across time. As a framework, IPST generates a host of novel and testable predictions to guide future research, all of which have important implications for the mental health, well-being, and positive development of children and families.

From child-peer similarity in imitative behavior to matched peer-mediated interventions in autism

Self-consciousness develops through a long process, from pre-reflexive consciousness relying on body perception, to "meta" self-awareness. It emerges from the imitative experience between children and their peers. This experience linked to the capacity to test structural similarities between oneself and others, is addressed according to the concept of interpersonal affordance. We hypothesize that the opportunity for co-actors to engage in a process of interpersonal coordination is underlined by their similarity in terms of morphological, behavioral and motor features. This experience can sustain the emergence of new affordances for objects for each co-actor, as well as new affordances in terms of joint actions. We apply this idea in the context of peer-mediated interventions (PMI) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We argue that, in PMI, an encounter between children with autism and similar peers would foster the opportunity to engage in a spontaneous process of interpersonal coordination. This process would enable the development of self-consciousness and the emergence of perception of interpersonal, self and other's affordances for children with autism. We conclude that metrics to assess morphological, behavioral and motor similarity should then be defined and used in future studies to test our hypothesis in children with autism versus TD children or between children with autism.

Revisiting the video deficit in technology-saturated environments: Successful imitation from people, screens, and social robots

The "video deficit" is a well-documented effect whereby children learn less well about information delivered via a screen than the same information delivered in person. Research suggests that increasing social contingency may ameliorate this video deficit. The current study instantiated social contingency to screen-based information by embodying the screen within a socially interactive robot presented to urban Australian children with frequent exposure to screen-based communication. We failed to document differences between 22- to 26-month-old children's (N = 80) imitation of screen-based information embedded in a social robot and in-person humans. Furthermore, we did not replicate the video deficit with children imitating at similar levels regardless of the presentation medium. This failure to replicate supports the findings of a recent meta-analysis of video deficit research whereby there appears to be a steady decrease over time in the magnitude of the video deficit effect. We postulate that, should the video deficit effect be truly dwindling in effect size, the video deficit may soon be a historical artifact as children begin perceiving technology as relevant and meaningful in everyday life more and more. This research finds that observational-based learning material can be successfully delivered in person, via a screen, or via a screen embedded in a social robot.

Young children use imitation communicatively

There is growing evidence that children imitate not just to learn from others but also to affiliate socially with them. However, although imitation can convey a wealth of affiliative information to others, it is not yet known whether imitators intend for this to be the case. In particular, we do not know whether children imitate communicatively in some contexts, expending extra effort to make sure that the demonstrator sees their imitation. Here, in two experiments (N = 20 and N = 48, respectively), we tested whether preschool-age children modify their imitation when needed to ensure that the demonstrator sees it. In each trial, children were shown a demonstration. Then, for their response, in one condition a barrier obscured the demonstrator's view of children's imitation unless children raised their arms above the barrier while imitating. In the other condition the demonstrator was able to see children's imitation without any additional effort from children. Results from both experiments showed that children were significantly more likely to imitate with their arms raised when their actions would otherwise be obscured from view. In the second experiment, we also coded for other communicative behaviors (e.g., social smiles, eye contact, showing gestures) and found that children often displayed communicative behaviors while imitating, as expected, in both conditions. Thus, young children actively use imitation communicatively in some contexts.

Infants' selective imitation of a transitive agent and an intransitive agent

This study examined how the reliability (i.e., transitivity) of an agent's object choices affects 16-month-old infants' (N = 48) imitation of her unconventional way of turning on a touch light box with her head when her hands were available. When the agent made transitive choices (i.e., she chose Object A over Object B, Object B over Object C, and then A over C), infants imitated her head touch actions. When the agent made intransitive choices (i.e., after choosing A over B and B over C, she chose C over A), infants were more likely to use only their hands to touch the light box. In addition, when it was presumably difficult for infants to judge the transitivity of the agent's choices (i.e., she chose B over C, A over B, and then A over C), they used their hands more. These results demonstrate that infants' understanding informs their decisions to selectively imitate others' specific ways to act on novel artifacts, consistent with young children's selective trust in information provided by other people based on their epistemic reliability.

3-4-year-old children’s memory flexibility allows adaptation to an altered context

Imitation provides a reliable method to investigate the developing memory functions in childhood. The present study explored whether 3-4-year-old children are able to revise their previous experiences after a 1 week delay in order to adapt to an altered context. We used a combined short-term (Session 1) and delayed (Session 2) imitation paradigm based on a previous study with 2-year-olds. The constraints (target object close/far) and relatedly the relevance of using a tool in a goal attainment task (irrelevant/relevant, respectively) changed between the sessions. We found that children in Session 1 used the tool only when it was needed (relevant/object far context). After the 1 week delay when the tool was previously irrelevant and then became relevant, children remembered the irrelevant act and applied it in the altered context. When the tool lost its relevance after 1 week, children used the tool less than before, but did not fully omit it, despite its reduced efficiency. The present data with 3-year-olds was compared to a pattern of results with 2-year-olds (from a similar previous study), that allowed to discuss possible developmental transitions in memory and imitation. We propose that the flexible restoration of a formerly irrelevant act and the maintenance of a formerly successful solution indicate flexibility of preschooler’s memory when guiding imitation. This flexibility, however, interacts with children’s tendency to remain faithful to strategies that were previously ostensively demonstrated to them.

Adopted Utility Calculus: Origins of a Concept of Social Affiliation

To successfully navigate their social world, humans need to understand and map enduring relationships between people: Humans need a concept of social affiliation. Here I propose that the initial concept of social affiliation, available in infancy, is based on the extent to which one individual consistently takes on the goals and needs of another. This proposal grounds affiliation in intuitive psychology, as formalized in the naive-utility-calculus model. A concept of affiliation based on interpersonal utility adoption can account for findings from studies of infants' reasoning about imitation, similarity, helpful and fair individuals, "ritual" behaviors, and social groups without the need for additional innate mechanisms such as a coalitional psychology, moral sense, or general preference for similar others. I identify further tests of this proposal and also discuss how it is likely to be relevant to social reasoning and learning across the life span.

Sequential learning of emotional faces is statistical at 12 months of age

Infants are capable of extracting statistical regularities from continuous streams of elements, which helps them structuring their surrounding environment. The current study examines 12-month-olds' capacity to extract statistical information from a sequence of emotional faces. Using a familiarization procedure, infants were presented with videos of two actresses expressing the same facial emotion, and subsequently turning toward or away from each other. Videos displayed different emotions (i.e., anger, happiness, fear, sadness, surprise, amusement, disgust, and exasperation) and were organized sequentially, so that the transitional probabilities between videos were highly predictable in some cases, and less predictable in others. At test, infants discriminated highly predictable from low predictable transitional probabilities, suggesting that they extracted statistical regularities from the sequence of emotional faces. However, when examining the looking toward and the looking away conditions separately, infants showed evidence of statistical learning in the looking toward condition only. Together, these findings suggest that 12-month-old infants rely on statistical learning to segment a continuous sequence of emotional faces, although this ability can be modulated by the nature of the stimuli. The contribution of statistical learning to structure infants' social environment is discussed.

Face-to-face learning enhances the social transmission of information

Learning from others provides the foundation for culture and the advancement of knowledge. Learning a new visuospatial skill from others represents a specific challenge-overcoming differences in perspective so that we understand what someone is doing and why they are doing it. The "what" of visuospatial learning is thought to be easiest from a shared 0° first-person perspective and most difficult from a 180° third-person perspective. However, the visual disparity at 180° promotes face-to-face interaction, which may enhance learning by scaffolding social perspective taking, the "why" of visuospatial learning. We tested these potentially conflicting hypotheses in child and young adult learners. Thirty-six children (4-6 years) and 57 young adults (18-27 years) observed a live model open a puzzle box from a first-person (0°) or third-person (90° or 180°) perspective. The puzzle box had multiple solutions, only one of which was modelled, which allowed for the assessment of imitation and goal emulation. Participants had three attempts to open the puzzle box from the model's perspective. While first-person (0°) observation increased imitation relative to a 180° third-person perspective, the 180° observers opened the puzzle box most readily (i.e., fastest). Although both age groups were excellent imitators and able to take the model's perspective, adults were more faithful imitators, and children were more likely to innovate a new solution. A shared visual perspective increased imitation, but a shared mental perspective promoted goal achievement and the social transmission of innovation. "Perfection of means and confusion of goals-in my opinion-seem to characterize our age" Einstein (1973) pg 337, Ideas and Opinions.

Revisiting an extant framework: Concerns about culture and task generalization

The target article elaborates upon an extant theoretical framework, “Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning.” We raise three major concerns: (1) There is limited discussion of cross-cultural universality and variation; (2) overgeneralization of overimitation and omission of other social learning types; and (3) selective imitation in infants and toddlers is not discussed.

If you presume relevance, you don't need a bifocal lens

We argue for a relevance-guided learning mechanism to account for both innovative reproduction and faithful imitation by focusing on the role of communication in knowledge transmission. Unlike bifocal stance theory, this mechanism does not require a strict divide between instrumental and ritual-like actions, and the goals they respectively fulfill (material vs. social/affiliative), to account for flexibility in action interpretation and reproduction.

Carry-over effects of tool functionality and previous unsuccessfulness increase overimitation in children

Children 'overimitate' causally irrelevant actions in experiments where both irrelevant and relevant actions involve a single common tool. This study design may make it harder for children to recognize the irrelevant actions, as the perceived functionality of the tool during the demonstration of the relevant action may be carried over to the irrelevant action, potentially increasing overimitation. Moreover, little is known how overimitation is affected by the demonstrator's expressed emotions and the child's prior success with the task. Here, 131 nine- to ten-year-old French and German children first engaged in a tool-based task, being successful or unsuccessful, and then watched an adult demonstrating the solution involving one irrelevant and one relevant action before smiling or remaining neutral. These actions were performed with the same tool or with two separate tools, testing potential carry-over effects of the functionality of the relevant action on the irrelevant action. We show that overimitation was higher when the same tool was used for both actions and when children were previously unsuccessful, but was not affected by the demonstrator's displayed emotion. Our results suggest that future overimitation research should account for the number of tools used in a demonstration and participants' previous task experience.

Social learning from media: The need for a culturally diachronic developmental psychology

Since the proliferation of television sets into households began over half a century ago there has been widespread interest in the impact that viewing has on young children's development. Such interest has grown with the increasing availability of smart phones and tablets. In this review we examine the literature documenting human social learning and how this learning is impacted when the instructing agent appears on a screen instead of face-to-face. We then explore the shifting nature of screen-based media, with a focus on the increasingly socio-normative manner information is portrayed. We discuss how the changing nature of screen technology might be altering how children interpret what they see, and raise the possibility that this may render prevailing evidence as historical documentation, rather than setting out established developmental milestones that transcend the period in which they were documented. We contend that recognizing the significance of historically changing contexts in developmental psychology is timely when the COVID-19 climate is pushing data collection on-line for many labs, often using tasks that were developed primarily for face-to-face contexts.

The Method of Local Restriction: in search of potential great ape culture-dependent forms

Humans possess a perhaps unique type of culture among primates called cumulative culture. In this type of culture, behavioural forms cumulate changes over time, which increases their complexity and/or efficiency, eventually making these forms culture-dependent. As changes cumulate, culture-dependent forms become causally opaque, preventing the overall behavioural form from being acquired by individuals on their own; in other words, culture-dependent forms must be copied between individuals and across generations. Despite the importance of cumulative culture for understanding the evolutionary history of our species, how and when cumulative culture evolved is still debated. One of the challenges faced when addressing these questions is how to identify culture-dependent forms that result from cumulative cultural evolution. Here we propose a novel method to identify the most likely cases of culture-dependent forms. The 'Method of Local Restriction' is based on the premise that as culture-dependent forms are repeatedly transmitted via copying, these forms will unavoidably cumulate population-specific changes (due to copying error) and therefore must be expected to become locally restricted over time. When we applied this method to our closest living relatives, the great apes, we found that most known ape behavioural forms are not locally restricted (across domains and species) and thus are unlikely to be acquired via copying. Nevertheless, we found 25 locally restricted forms across species and domains, three of which appear to be locally unique (having been observed in a single population of a single species). Locally unique forms represent the best current candidates for culture-dependent forms in non-human great apes. Besides these rare exceptions, our results show that overall, ape cultures do not rely heavily on copying, as most ape behaviours appear across sites and/or species, rendering them unlikely to be culture-dependent forms resulting from cumulative cultural evolution. Yet, the locally restricted forms (and especially the three locally unique forms) identified by our method should be tested further for their potential reliance on copying social learning mechanisms (and in turn, for their potential culture-dependence). Future studies could use the Method of Local Restriction to investigate the existence of culture-dependent forms in other animal species and in the hominin archaeological record to estimate how widespread copying is in the animal kingdom and to postulate a timeline for the emergence of copying in our lineage.

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far.

The Social Function of Imitation in Development

Imitation is a deeply social process. Here, I review evidence that children use imitation as a means by which to affiliate with others. For example, children imitate the actions of others more closely when they seek a positive social relationship with them and respond positively to being imitated. Furthermore, children infer something of the relationships between third parties by observing their imitative exchanges. Understanding the social nature of imitation requires exploring the nature of the social relationships between children and the individuals they imitate. Thus, in addition to discussing children's own goals in imitative situations, I review the social pressures children experience to imitate in particular ways, learning to conform to the conventions and rituals of their group. In the latter part of this article, I discuss the extent to which this perspective on imitation can help us to understand broader topics within social development, including the origins of human cultural differences.

The flexibility of early memories: Limited reevaluation of action steps in 2-year-old infants

This study investigated the flexibility of 2-year-old infants' retrieval and reenactment processes. In a delayed imitation paradigm, children were exposed to a constraint change (implemented by the distance of a target object) affecting the relevance of using a tool to obtain a goal (reach the object). In Experiment 1, during demonstration in the first session the tool was either relevant or irrelevant for reaching the goal, and 1 week later it either lost or gained its relevance, respectively. We found that when the tool became unnecessary (relevant to irrelevant change), children used it somewhat less than before and used it less compared with when the tool's relevance remained the same (relevant to relevant, no change). When the tool became necessary after a constraint change (irrelevant to relevant change), children used the tool more than before, but not as much as in the Relevant-Relevant control condition. In Experiment 2, the timing of the constraint change (immediate or delayed) was varied in a modified version of the Irrelevant-Relevant condition, where practice before the constraint change was omitted. Children were not significantly more flexible in the immediate condition than in the delayed condition, and comparisons with Experiment 1 showed that performance did not change if we omitted the practice before the change. These results indicate that although 2-year-olds show considerable mnemonic performance, they face difficulties in adapting to constraint changes. We propose that this inflexibility may stem from infants' inability to revise their evaluations formed in previous events due to their immature episodic memory capacities.

Optimizing imitation: Examining cognitive factors leading to imitation, overimitation, and goal emulation in preschoolers

Humans imitate patently irrelevant actions known as overimitation, and rather than decreasing with age, overimitation increases with age. Whereas most overimitation research has focused on social factors associated with overimitation, comparatively little is known about the cognitive- and task-specific features that influence overimitation. Specifically, developmental contrasts between imitation and overimitation are confounded by the addition of irrelevant actions to causally necessary actions, increasing sequence length, cognitive load, and processing costs-variables known to be age dependent. We constructed a novel puzzle box task such that a four-step imitation, four-step overimitation, and two-step efficient sequence could be demonstrated using the same apparatus on video. In Experiments 1 and 2, 2.5- to 5-year-olds randomly assigned to imitation and overimitation groups performed significantly more target actions than baseline control groups. Rates of imitation and overimitation increased as a function of age, with older preschoolers outperforming younger preschoolers in both conditions. In Experiment 3, preschoolers were shown a video of an efficient two-step demonstration prior to testing. After they responded, they were shown a four-step overimitation video and were tested on the same puzzle box. Children imitated the efficient demonstration, but after watching the overimitation video, they also overimitated the irrelevant actions. Once again, older children overimitated more than younger children. Together, results show that preschoolers are faithful, flexible, and persistent overimitators. The fidelity and flexibility of overimitation are constrained not only by social factors but also by basic cognitive processes that vary across age groups. As these constraints diminish, overimitation and flexible (optimal) imitation increases.

Social context influences infants' ability to extract statistical information from a sequence of gestures

Infants' social environment is rich of complex sequences of events and actions. This study investigates whether 12-month-old infants are able to learn statistical regularities from a sequence of human gestures and whether this ability is affected by a social vs non-social context. Using a visual familiarization task, infants were familiarized to a continuous sequence of eight videos in which two women imitated each other performing arm gestures. The sequence of videos in which the two women performed imitative gestures was organized into 4 different gesture units. Videos within a gesture unit had a highly predictable transitional probability, while such transition was less predictable between gesture units. The social context was manipulated varying the mutual gaze of the actors and their body orientation. At test, infants were able to discriminate between the high- and low-predictable gesture units in the social, but not in the non-social condition. Results demonstrate that infants are capable to detect statistical regularities from a sequence of human gestures performed by two different individuals. Moreover, our findings indicate that salient social cues can modulate infants' ability to extract statistical information from a sequence of gestures.

Priming third-party ostracism does not lead to increased affiliation in three Serbian communities

Young children rely on establishing and maintaining social relationships. As a consequence, social exclusion poses a significant threat that should be avoided actively. Previous research reports that children react to ostracism with an increased tendency to affiliate. For example, they draw more affiliative pictures and engage in more faithful (over)imitation following primes depicting social exclusion. However, all prior studies to date tested this effect in children from strongly socially independent societies, emphasizing individual freedom and psychological autonomy. The current study tested whether these effects also occur among children growing up in a society where social interdependence is emphasized more strongly. We assessed affiliative reactions to video primes depicting either third-party ostracism or control stimuli among 128 preschoolers (M_age = 4.73 years) from an urban community (Belgrade), a semi-urban community (Pozarevac), and a rural community (Kostolac) in Serbia. Across communities, children detected ostracism when it was depicted in the priming stimuli. However, children neither drew more affiliative pictures nor engaged in more faithful overimitation following primes depicting ostracism as compared with control stimuli. The two measures for affiliation (i.e., affiliative drawings and increased overimitation) were not linked on an individual level. Although these results suggest that young children from diverse societies are capable of recognizing third-party social exclusion, their response to such information is strongly shaped by cultural values on social interdependence.

Selective overimitation in dogs

Dogs have not only shown different kinds of social learning, from either conspecifics or humans, including do-as-I-do imitation, deferred imitation, and selective imitation, but in two previous studies they have also shown an eagerness to copy causally irrelevant actions. This so-called overimitation is prevalent in humans but is totally absent in great apes. Whereas in one of two previous studies dogs copied actions from an experimenter (Johnston, Holden, & Santos in Developmental Science, 20, e12460, 2017), in the other a reasonable number of the dogs copied the irrelevant actions from their human caregiver (Huber, Popovová, Riener, Salobir, & Cimarelli in Learning & Behavior, 46, 387-397, 2018). Dogs have not only been domesticated to live and work with us, but many companion dogs develop strong affiliative relationships with their caregiver, which are akin to the attachment bonds between human children and their mother. We therefore assumed that overimitation in dogs might be strongly motivated by social factors, such as affiliation or conformity. To test this hypothesis, we confronted dogs with the same demonstration of causally relevant and irrelevant actions as in the previous study (Huber et al. in Learning & Behavior, 46, 387-397, 2018), but this time with an unfamiliar experimenter instead of the caregiver as the demonstrator. The results strongly supported our hypothesis: Whereas half of the subjects in the previous study replicated the causally irrelevant action demonstrated by their caregiver, only very few did so when the actions were demonstrated by the experimenter. We conclude that the eagerness of dogs to learn from humans and to copy even unnecessary actions is strongly facilitated by their relationship with the particular human.

Homo neanderthalensis and the evolutionary origins of ritual in Homo sapiens

There is a large, if disparate, body of archaeological literature discussing specific instantiations of symbolic material culture and the possibility of ritual practices in Neanderthal populations. Despite this attention, however, no single synthesis exists that draws upon cognitive, psychological and cultural evolutionary theories of ritual. Here, we review the evidence for ritual-practice among now-extinct Homo neanderthalensis, as well as the necessary cognitive pre-conditions for such behaviour, in order to explore the evolution of ritual in Homo sapiens. We suggest that the currently available archaeological evidence indicates that Neanderthals may have used 'ritualization' to increase the successful transmission of technical knowledge across generations-providing an explanation for the technological stability of the Middle Palaeolithic and attesting to a survival strategy differing from near-contemporary H. sapiens. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Fourteen-month-olds' imitation is influenced more strongly by a model's competence than by a model's certainty

Research has shown that infants are more likely to learn from certain and competent models than from uncertain and incompetent models. However, it is unknown which of these cues to a model's reliability infants consider more important. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether 14-month-old infants (n = 35) imitate and adopt tool choices selectively from an uncertain but competent compared to a certain but incompetent model. Infants watched videos in which an adult expressed either uncertainty but acted competently or expressed certainty but acted incompetently with familiar objects. In tool-choice tasks, the adult then chose one of two objects to operate an apparatus, and in imitation tasks, the adult then demonstrated a novel action. Infants did not adopt the model's choice in the tool-choice tasks but they imitated the uncertain but competent model more often than the certain but incompetent model in the imitation tasks. In Experiment 2, 14-month-olds (n = 33) watched videos in which an adult expressed only either certainty or uncertainty in order to test whether infants at this age are sensitive to a model's certainty. Infants imitated and adopted the tool choice from a certain model more than from an uncertain model. These results suggest that 14-month-olds acknowledge both a model's competence and certainty when learning novel actions. However, they rely more on a model's competence than on his certainty when both cues are in conflict. The ability to detect reliable models when learning how to handle cultural artifacts helps infants to become well-integrated members of their culture.

A Neuro-computational Account of Arbitration between Choice Imitation and Goal Emulation during Human Observational Learning

When individuals learn from observing the behavior of others, they deploy at least two distinct strategies. Choice imitation involves repeating other agents' previous actions, whereas emulation proceeds from inferring their goals and intentions. Despite the prevalence of observational learning in humans and other social animals, a fundamental question remains unaddressed: how does the brain decide which strategy to use in a given situation? In two fMRI studies (the second a pre-registered replication of the first), we identify a neuro-computational mechanism underlying arbitration between choice imitation and goal emulation. Computational modeling, combined with a behavioral task that dissociated the two strategies, revealed that control over behavior was adaptively and dynamically weighted toward the most reliable strategy. Emulation reliability, the model's arbitration signal, was represented in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and rostral cingulate cortex. Our replicated findings illuminate the computations by which the brain decides to imitate or emulate others.

Imitation in Chinese Preschool Children: Influence of Prior Self-Experience and Pedagogical Cues on the Imitation of Novel Acts in a Non-Western Culture

Both prior experience and pedagogical cues modulate Western children’s imitation. However, these factors have not been systematically explored together within a single study. This paper explored how these factors individually and together influence imitation using 4-year-old children born and reared in mainland China (N = 210)—a country that contains almost one-fifth of the world’s population, and in which childhood imitation is under-studied using experimental methodology. The behavior of children in this culture is of special interest to theory because traditional East Asian culture places high value on conformity and fitting in with the group. Thus, high-fidelity imitation is emphasized in the local culture. This value, practice, or norm may be recognized by children at a young age and influence their imitative performance. In this study, we crossed prior self-experience and pedagogical cues, yielding four demonstration groups in addition to a control group. This design allowed us to investigate the degree to which Chinese preschoolers’ imitation was modulated by the two experimental factors. High-fidelity imitation was significantly modulated by prior self-experience but not by pedagogical cues, as measured by the number of novel acts imitated and also the serial order of these acts. This study (i) expands our understanding of factors that modulate imitation of novel behaviors in preschoolers and (ii) contributes to efforts to broaden research beyond Western societies to enrich our theories, particularly regarding social learning and imitation. Imitation is a key mechanism in the acquisition of culturally appropriate behaviors, mannerisms, and norms but who, what, and when children imitate is malleable. This study points to both cross-cultural invariants and variations to provide a fuller picture of the scope and functions of childhood imitation.

Toddlers imitate prosocial demonstrations in bystander but not transgressor contexts

Although prosocial abilities are associated with a wide range of healthy outcomes, few studies have experimentally examined socialization practices that may cause increased prosocial responding. The purpose of this study was to investigate conditions under which 2- and 3-year-old children can acquire prosocial behaviors through imitation. In Study 1 (N = 53), toddlers in the experimental condition watched a video of an adult comfort a woman in distress by performing a novel prosocial action without depicting how the woman was hurt. Parents then pretended they hurt their own finger and feigned distress. Children in the experimental condition were more likely to imitate the novel action relative to two control groups: (a) children who did not watch the video but witnessed a distressed parent, and (b) children who watched the video but witnessed parents engage in a neutral interaction. Thus, in a bystander context where children witnessed parent distress, toddlers imitated a general demonstration of how to respond prosocially to distress and applied this information to a specific distress scenario. In Study 2 (N = 54), the procedures were identical to those in the first study except that children were led to believe that they had transgressed to cause parent distress. In a transgressor context, children in the experimental condition were not more likely to imitate the prosocial behavior relative to children in either control group. These studies demonstrate that whether or not children have caused a victim's distress greatly affects their ability to apply a socially learned prosocial behavior, possibly due to self-conscious emotions such as guilt and shame.

Two-year-old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Children are sensitive to both social and non-social aspects of the learning environment. Among social cues, pedagogical communication has been shown to not only play a role in children's learning, but also in their own active transmission of knowledge. Vredenburgh, Kushnir and Casasola, Developmental Science, 2015, 18, 645 showed that 2-year-olds are more likely to demonstrate an action to a naive adult after learning it in a pedagogical than in a non-pedagogical context. This finding was interpreted as evidence that pedagogically transmitted information has a special status as culturally relevant. Here we test the limits of this claim by setting it in contrast with an explanation in which the relevance of information is the outcome of multiple interacting social (e.g., pedagogical demonstration) and non-social properties (e.g., action complexity). To test these competing hypotheses, we varied both pedagogical cues and action complexity in an information transmission paradigm with 2-year-old children. In Experiment 1, children preferentially transmitted simple non-pedagogically demonstrated actions over pedagogically demonstrated more complex actions. In Experiment 2, when both actions were matched for complexity, we found no evidence of preferential transmission of pedagogically demonstrated actions. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and previous literature showing an effect of pedagogical cues on cultural transmission, and conclude that our results are compatible with the view that pedagogical and other cues interact, but incompatible with the theory of a privileged role for pedagogical cues.

The role of context in "over-imitation": Evidence of movement-based goal inference in young children

Children, as well as adults, often imitate causally unnecessary actions. Three experiments investigated whether such "over-imitation" occurs because these actions are interpreted as performed for the movement's sake (i.e., having a "movement-based" goal). Experiment 1 (N = 30, 2-5-year-olds) replicated previous findings; children imitated actions with no goal more precisely than actions with external goals. Experiment 2 (N = 58, 2-5-year-olds) confirmed that the difference between these conditions was not due to the absence/presence of external goals but rather was also found when actions brought about external goals in a clearly inefficient way. Experiment 3 (N = 36, 3-5-year-olds) controlled for the possibility that imitation fidelity was affected by the number of actions and objects present during the demonstration and confirmed that identical actions were imitated more precisely when they appeared to be more inefficient toward an external goal. Our findings suggest that movement-based goal inference encourages over-imitation.

Individual differences in neonatal "imitation" fail to predict early social cognitive behaviour

The influential hypothesis that humans imitate from birth - and that this capacity is foundational to social cognition - is currently being challenged from several angles. Most prominently, the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study of neonatal imitation to date failed to find evidence that neonates copied any of nine actions at any of four time points (Oostenbroek et al., [2016] Current Biology, 26, 1334-1338). The authors of an alternative and statistically liberal post-hoc analysis of these same data (Meltzoff et al., [2017] Developmental Science, 21, e12609), however, concluded that the infants actually did imitate one of the nine actions: tongue protrusion. In line with the original intentions of this longitudinal study, we here report on whether individual differences in neonatal "imitation" predict later-developing social cognitive behaviours. We measured a variety of social cognitive behaviours in a subset of the original sample of infants (N = 71) during the first 18 months: object-directed imitation, joint attention, synchronous imitation and mirror self-recognition. Results show that, even using the liberal operationalization, individual scores for neonatal "imitation" of tongue protrusion failed to predict any of the later-developing social cognitive behaviours. The average Spearman correlation was close to zero, mean r_s  = 0.027, 95% CI [-0.020, 0.075], with all Bonferroni adjusted p values > .999. These results run counter to Meltzoff et al.'s rebuttal, and to the existence of a "like me" mechanism in neonates that is foundational to human social cognition.

The effect of verbal information about model's competence on overimitation by preschool children

Overimitation is defined by a tendency to copy all actions executed by a model, even the clearly irrelevant ones. The motivational mechanisms and functionality of overimitation are still not well understood, but its possible adaptive meaning could be related to causal opacity of a great part of socially learned behaviors. This phenomenon has been widely replicated in several contexts and has been observed in the behavior of children over 2 years of age and even in adults. Despite the seeming robustness of overimitation, studies have shown that it is sensitive to some characteristics of a model observed such as age, familiarity, proficiency, and reputation. Our work intended to investigate the effect of information about the competence of an adult model on the copying of irrelevant actions by preschool children (5 years old) in a task. We tested the influence of self-declared information about the model competence and of the same kind of information given by third parties in a conversation about the model. Our results reveal no effect of both "self-declared competence" and "reputation" biases on overimitation. We discuss that this result may have occurred because other information available to participants, and not manipulated by us, was used to infer model competence such as the model's age and success in the task directly observed by the participants. Another potential explanation is that children use a "copy all, correct later" strategy in a context where only one model is available.

Rational imitation declines within the second year of life: Changes in the function of imitation

Cultural learning plays a crucial role in enabling children to fit into their social community by mastering culture-specific habits. Infants learn actions via imitation, and they seem to be sensitive to the context in which a model demonstrates these. They imitate rationally by copying unusual means to achieve a goal more when the model chooses this means voluntarily compared with when some constraints force the model to do so. We investigated the development of rational imitation. In a within-participants design, 18-, 24-, and 36-month-olds (N = 293) observed two unusual actions: Instead of using her hands, a model operated an apparatus by using her head or by sitting on the apparatus. The model did so once with her hands being occupied and once with her hands being free. Besides measuring participants' imitative responses, we analyzed the gaze behavior directed at the model during the response phase of the current study and of 14-month-olds (N = 82) from Gellén and Buttelmann's study (Child Development Research, Vol. 2017, art. 8080649 [2017]). Increasing age was accompanied by an increasing rate of overall imitation across conditions. None of the three older age groups selectively imitated the unusual actions significantly more often in the hands-free condition than in the hands-occupied condition. Thus, rational imitation seems to disappear during the second year of life. Furthermore, there was a significant increase between 14 and 24 months of age and beyond in children's tendency to gaze at the model after reenacting the observed action. Children's gaze behavior indicates that this pattern might be due to a growing underlying social component in early cultural learning.

Would dogs copy irrelevant actions from their human caregiver?

Companion dogs learn easily from humans, including human behavior, human communication, and some aspects of the human-made environment. They benefit from having the opportunity to learn from humans and are able to spontaneously synchronize their behavior with that of their caregiver. Here, we tested whether pet dogs would show a special form of observational learning, one that has been considered uniquely human. Indeed, humans show overimitation, the faithful copying of causally irrelevant actions, but great apes do not. Because in humans this peculiar form of imitation is strongly motivated by social factors, such as affiliation or conformity, we hypothesized that domesticated and enculturated dogs are more likely than apes are to copy such actions, especially if shown by their affiliated caregiver. Indeed, half of the dogs replicated a causally irrelevant action that was demonstrated by their caregiver, and about the same number did this whether they saw only this action being demonstrated or being demonstrated before or after a causally relevant, functional action. The demonstration of a causally relevant action, one that is immediately followed by access to food, thus does not inhibit the copying of an action that is spatially separated and functionally opaque. Given that the copying frequency in this study was low overall, these results suggest evidence for overimitation in dogs, which might challenge the human uniqueness of this type of social learning.

Means-end problem solving in infancy: Development, emergence of intentionality, and transfer of knowledge

Behaviors and performance of 23 typically developing infants were assessed longitudinally at 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months in two means-end tasks: pulling a towel or rotating a turntable to obtain a supported object. With age, infants performed more goal-directed behaviors, leading to increased problem-solving success. Intentionality emerged earlier in the towel task than in the turntable task (6.9 vs. 10.8 months). Potential knowledge transfer between the tasks was first observed at 9 months. This study provides insight into the development of means-end learning, the emergence of intentionality, and potential transfer of knowledge in tasks involving a similar concept (support) but requiring different modes of action for success (pulling vs. rotating).

Are you watching me? The role of audience and object novelty in overimitation

This study tested whether overimitation is subject to an audience effect, and whether it is modulated by object novelty. A sample of 86 4- to 11-year-old children watched a demonstrator open novel and familiar boxes using sequences of necessary and unnecessary actions. The experimenter then observed the children, turned away, or left the room while the children opened the box. Children copied unnecessary actions more when the experimenter watched or when she left, but they copied less when she turned away. This parallels infant studies suggesting that turning away is interpreted as a signal of disengagement. Children displayed increased overimitation and reduced efficiency discrimination when opening novel boxes compared with familiar boxes. These data provide important evidence that object novelty is a critical component of overimitation.