Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Abstract

Imitation was tested both immediately and after a 24-hr retention interval in 6-week-old infants. The results showed immediate imitation, which replicates past research, and also imitation from memory, which is new. The latter finding implicates recall memory and establishes that 6-weekolds can generate actions on the basis of stored representations. The motor organization involved in imitation was investigated through a microanalysis of the matching response. Results revealed that infants gradually modified their behavior towards more accurate matches over successive trials. It is proposed that early imitation serves a social identity function. Infants are motivated to imitate after a 24-hr delay as a means of clarifying whether the person they see before them is the same one they previously encountered. They use the reenactment of a person's behavior to probe whether this is the same person. In the domain of inanimate objects, infants use physical manipulations (e.g., shaking) to perform this function. Imitation is to understanding people as physical manipulation is to understanding things. Motor imitation, the behavioral reenactment of things people do, is a primitive means of understanding and communicating with people. Keywordsimitation; memory; mental representation; faces; cross-modal; motor coordination; self; identity; communication; theory of mind; development Children learn by watching adults. Young children often do as parents do instead of as parents say, suggesting that visual models exert a powerful influence on children's actions. In infancy, before language, imitation plays an especially prominent role: It is an avenue for teaching motor skills and also embodies a mutuality and reciprocity that is the essence of communication at the nonverbal level. As apparently simple and commonplace as imitation is, it presents some of the deepest puzzles for theories of infancy. In order to imitate, the child must see the adult's actions, use this visual perception as a basis for an action plan, and execute the motor output. Thus, imitation taps perception, cross-modal coordination, and motor control. If imitation takes place after a significant delay, memory is also involved. The type of memory indexed by imitation is not merely recognition memory, because the infant is doing more than seeing a pattern as familiar or novel. The infant must generate an action on the basis of a memory, thus illustrating a primitive form of nonverbal recall memory (Mandler, 1990;Meltzoff, 1985Meltzoff, , 1988aMeltzoff, , 1990b.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Andrew N. Meltzoff, Department of Psychology (WJ-10), University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe rich psychological web in which imitation is situated-learning, communication, perception-action links, memory, and representation-has made it an enduring topic in developmental psychology (Baldwin, 1906;Piaget, 1962) and an issue in philosophy of...

The mirror game as a paradigm for studying the dynamics of two people improvising motion together

“…Mirroring is a basic form of social communication (28), thought to be involved in the establishment of parent-baby bonds (29) and to enhance children's play (14) and rapport between people (30). The mirror game offers a scenario in which two people create novel behavior together that is simple enough to study quantitatively.…”

The ‘like me’ framework for recognizing and becoming an intentional agent

“…First, the observations of others' acts can be stored and accessed after a delay (Meltzoff & Moore, 1994. At minimum, there is an intermediary representation and not simply an automatic transduction.…”

“…At minimum, there is an intermediary representation and not simply an automatic transduction. Second, infants correct their imitative efforts (Meltzoff & Moore, 1994. Information about one's acts has to be available for comparison to the representation of the adult's act, but the representation of the observed act is not confused with or modified by one's own multiple motor attempts.…”

Perceiving conspecifics as integrated body-gestalts is an embodied process.

“…Movement-or motor-resonance was investigated predominantly in the context of the so-called mirror system, typically using imitation or observation tasks that showed limbs in isolation (Bertenthal & Pinto, 1994;Biermann-Ruben et al, 2008; Embodied Body-Gestalt Completion; Kessler & Miellet 4 Wohlschlager, & Prinz, 2000;Catmur, Walsh, & Heyes, 2007;Iacoboni et al, 1999;Jonas et al, 2007;Kessler et al, 2006;Rizzolatti & Fabbri-Destro, 2010). In contrast, other research has emphasised the importance of the overall posture or gestalt perceived in conspecifics (Amorim, Isableu, & Jarraya, 2006;Johansson, 1973;Kessler, Gordon, Cessford, & Lages, 2010;Kessler & Thomson, 2010;Lestou, Pollick, & Kourtzi, 2008;McKay et al, 2011;Meltzoff & Moore, 1994;Reed & Farah, 1995;Saygin, 2007). Returning to our initial example of people being occluded by a table and a newspaper in a café, we set out to investigate whether the body schema -as the likely substrate of motor-and posture-resonance (e.g.…”