Imitation in a home-raised chimpanzee.

Abstract

The popular opinion that subhuman primates possess a high order of imitative ability is supported by a considerable amount of observational data. In summarizing such evidence with regard to chimpanzees, Yerkes and Yerkes say:... we feel entirely safe in asserting, as the consensus of opinion among competent students, that the chimpanzee commonly and with extreme facility imitates acts, in some instances for the mere satisfaction of performing them, and in other cases for the sake of a desired reward or objective (12, p. 347).

The evolution of imitation: what do the capacities of non-human animals tell us about the mechanisms of imitation?

“…Hayes & Hayes (1952) made the first attempt in this direction by training the homereared chimpanzee Viki to reproduce a variety of actions on command. Later this so-called 'Do-as-Ido' paradigm has been used for studying a subject's ability to imitate specified actions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes; Tomasello et al 1993;Custance et al 1995;Myowa-Yamakoshi & Matsuzawa 1999) Topal et al 2006).…”

“…(a) Do-as-I-do studies (i) Do-as-I-do in great apes The lack of rigorous procedures and analyses in the Hayes & Hayes (1952) study prompted several follow-up studies some 40 years later. In the first of these, Custance et al (1995) presented 48 novel actions to two juvenile (between 4 and 5 years of age) nursery-reared chimpanzees.…”

Ratcheting up the ratchet: on the evolution of cumulative culture

“…But the other members of the group did not pick up this gesture (chimpanzees very likely learn their gestures individually via ritualization). Failures have many potential explanations, of course, but it is relevant that to learn to mimic bodily actions in the so-called 'do as I do' paradigm, human-raised chimpanzees need several weeks of training (Hayes & Hayes 1952;Custance et al 1995), which suggests that copying actions is not something that they do with special skill or ease (or fidelity; see review in Huber et al 2009). …”

The association between imitation recognition and socio-communicative competencies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

“…Imitation is defined as reproducing an action after seeing it performed (modified from Thorndike, 1898). It has been suggested by some that imitative learning is a uniquely human form of learning and this claim has stimulated a significant body of research in non-human animals, and particularly non-human primates (Hayes and Hayes, 1952; Tomasello et al, 1987, 1993; Custance et al, 1995; Voelkl and Huber, 2000; Myowa-Yamakoshi et al, 2004; Call et al, 2005; Horner and Whiten, 2005; Tennie et al, 2006; Bard, 2007; Buttelmann et al, 2007; Hobaiter and Byrne, 2010). Further, the neural constructs underlying imitation appear to be rooted in a proposed action-recognition system of mirror neurons that encode both the somatosensory input of another individual performing an action as well as the motor output required for the individual to perform the action themselves.…”

“…For instance, mirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys (see Rizzolatti and Luppino, 2001; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004), a species for which there is little if any evidence of imitation (but see Ferrari et al, 2006, 2009). With the exception of neonatal imitation in macaques and chimpanzees (Myowa-Yamakoshi et al, 2004; Ferrari et al, 2006; Bard, 2007), evidence of true imitation, such as that demonstrated in “do-as-I-do” types of tasks are rare in the non-human literature (Hayes and Hayes, 1952; Moore, 1992; Custance et al, 1995; Topal et al, 2006; Abramson et al, 2013). Indeed, though a number of studies have demonstrated that non-human primates can learn to solve certain problem-solving tasks by observation, whether these skills are acquired by imitation or other related processes such as emulation and social facilitation remains a topic of considerable debate (Tomasello et al, 1987; Myowa-Yamakoshi and Matsuzawa, 1999; Voelkl and Huber, 2000; Call et al, 2005; Horner and Whiten, 2005; Buttelmann et al, 2007; Carpenter and Call, 2009; Hobaiter and Byrne, 2010).…”