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

Abstract

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.

Enhancing same‐gender imitation by highlighting gender norms in Chinese pre‐school children

“…For example, in Clegg and Legare (2016), children replicated irrelevant actions as part of making a bead necklace (e.g., using each bead to touch the forehead before stringing it on the necklace) only when the task was coupled with normative framing (e.g., the statement that ‘everyone here always does this’). Similarly, it has been reported that children tend not to over‐imitate when the demonstrator is a puppet (McGuigan & Robertson, 2015), when the demonstrator is absent (Nielsen & Blank, 2011), when a more efficient approach has been shown to them (Schleihauf, Pauen, & Hoehl, 2019), when the efficient approach has been experienced through prior self‐action (Wang & Meltzoff, 2020; Williamson & Meltzoff, 2011), or even when the demonstrator has previously displayed anti‐social behaviours (Wilks, Kirby, & Nielsen, 2019). Indeed, children’s decision about whether to imitate causally irrelevant acts in a high‐fidelity manner (over‐imitation) versus directly achieving the causal outcome in an efficient way is now thought to be context dependent, and governed at least in part, by cues that inform the child to attend to social conventions (Krieger, Aschersleben, Sommerfeld, & Buttelmann, 2020; Legare, Wen, Herrmann, & Whitehouse, 2015).…”

“…This addressed recent calls in psychology (Rad et al, 2018), and developmental psychology in particular (Nielsen, Haun, Kärtner, & Legare, 2017), that researchers should strive to gather data from a broader range of cultures than the Western ones, which have been used in the majority of published studies. We chose to test pre‐schoolers from China, a traditional, east‐Asian Chinese culture which contains almost one‐fifth of the world’s population – and this broadens our knowledge about children’s imitation within a country in which children’s social behaviour has rarely been studied using experimental methods (for exceptions see, Li, Liao, Cheng, & He, 2019; Wang & Meltzoff, 2020; Wang, Williamson, & Meltzoff, 2015; Wang et al, 2020).…”

“…We employed a previously established paradigm of over‐imitation (Hoehl et al, 2019; Wang & Meltzoff, 2020) to examine the effect of heightened social cues on children’s imitation of non‐efficient actions in Chinese children. Specifically, we examined the degree to which an own‐gender model coupled with a linguistic affirmation of gender norms (e.g., ‘girls play this way’) would influence children’s high‐fidelity imitation of causally unnecessary, novel acts that were not needed to reach an instrumental end but were demonstrated by a model.…”

“…Increasingly, studies have been devoted to testing over‐imitation in diverse populations. For instance, studies conducted in South Africa and Botswana (Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010), Vanuatu (Clegg & Legare, 2016), Japan (Taniguchi & Sanefuji, 2017), and China (Wang & Meltzoff, 2020; Wang, Zhu, Fong, Meng, & Wang, 2020) have demonstrated that children’s propensity for over‐imitation is not limited to Western cultures.…”

Scientific Research Conformity of University Teachers: Role of Incentives and Internal Attribution

“…Perhaps this is because the university teachers are in an environment or social relations full of competing interests, hence, further validation is required in the future. The psychology of research conformity is studied in the context of traditional Chinese culture, and some studies have shown that Chinese researchers are more emotionally motivated to be compliant [ 58 ]. Finally, the qualitative study mainly used in-depth interviews with the aim of analyzing the types and motivational characteristics of SRC, but there are limitations, as the unstructured nature of the survey makes the results very susceptible to the interviewer’s own influence, and the integrity of the quality of the results is very dependent on the interviewer’s skill, which may lead to one-sided or superficial information obtained in the study.…”