Studies of Imitation in Chimpanzees and Children

Whiten, Andrew; Custance, Deborah M.

doi:10.1016/b978-012273965-1/50015-7

Cited by 69 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…One of the variables that may play a role in imitative learning by primates appears to be the degree to which the animals have had extensive interactions with humans-what Tomasello (1990) refers to as enculturation. Enculturated chimpanzees and orangutans readily show signs of imitative learning (Tomasello, Gust, & Frost, 1989;Tomasello, Savage-Rumbaugh, & Kruger, 1993;Russon & Galdikas, 1993, 1995, whereas labhoused and reared chimpanzees often do not (Whiten & Custance, 1996, but see Tomasello & Call, 2004). Furthermore, have suggested that enculturated apes may develop an understanding of intentionality (see Searle, 1983).…”

Section: Variables That May Influence Opaque Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Emulation may be involved in a procedure used with chimpanzees in which they learn to open a box to obtain a reward (Whiten & Custance, 1996). Some demonstrator chimpanzees were trained to poke a bolt to open the box, whereas other demonstrators were trained to twist and pull the bolt to achieve the same result.…”

Section: Goal Emulation Object-movement Reenactment and Emulation Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perspectives on observational learning in animals.

Zentall

2012

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Observational learning is presumed to have occurred when an organism copies an improbable action or action outcome that it has observed and the matching behavior cannot be explained by an alternative mechanism. Psychologists have been particularly interested in the form of observational learning known as imitation and in how to distinguish imitation from other processes. To successfully make this distinction, one must disentangle the degree to which behavioral similarity results from (a) predisposed behavior, (b) increased motivation resulting from the presence of another animal, (c) attention drawn to a place or object, (d) learning about the way the environment works, as distinguished from what we think of as (e) imitation (the copying of the demonstrated behavior). Several of the processes that may be involved in observational learning are reviewed, including social facilitation, stimulus enhancement, several kinds of emulation, and various forms of imitation.

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Section: Variables That May Influence Opaque Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Goal Emulation Object-movement Reenactment and Emulation Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectives on observational learning in animals.

Zentall

2012

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…Note that cumulation does not require any high degree of social cooperation beyond that which is involved in merely permitting others to observe and imitate. Capacities for cumulation must have evolved gradually from simpler observational capacities that modern apes currently possess (Tomasello & Call, 1997;Whiten & Custance, 1996). A recent analysis of the variability of behavior of seven chimpanzee groups suggests that Pan troglodytes apparently has some capacity for cumulation.…”

Section: Cumulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even technical skills are typically learned primarily by observation and apprenticeship involving guided participation or legitimate peripheral participation. Imitation may seem simple, but in fact only humans have evolved very sophisticated capacities to observe others, understand the functional relations of means to ends, and imitate the purposeful sequence (Nagel, Olguin, & Tomasello, 1993;Tomasello & Call, 1997;Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993; but see Whiten & Custance, 1996).…”

Section: Ontogenetic Externalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complementarity Theory: Why Human Social Capacities Evolved to Require Cultural Complements

Fiske

2000

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

132

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This article introduces complementarity theory, which explains the psychology of cultural diversity as a product of evolved social proclivities that enable-and reMy aim in this article is to describe the natural selection of universal psychological mechanisms that result in cultural diversity. Complementarity theory posits that human social coordination is the product of structured psychological proclivities linked to corresponding cultural paradigms. Using innate expectations about the ways in which people encode and conduct social relations, children take primary responsibility in actively searching for the relevant cultural paradigms they need. Putting proclivities together with congruent paradigms, children learn to construct culture-specific coordination devices that enable them to interact in locally meaningful ways. The evolved proclivities and cultural paradigms are complementary: Both are necessary but neither is sufficient to permit complex social coordination. People cannot use either their socially transmitted paradigms or their evolved proclivities independently of each other. Combining them, humans devise and depend on diverse, flexible social adaptations.These coordination systems make possible a second kind of complementarity: the complementarity of the respective actions of the participants. To cooperate, contest, or defect, it is extremely advantageous to know what other people want, judge, feel, think, and will do. Moreover, many kinds of complex mutually beneficial cooperation require this kind of complementarity: communication, exchange, division of labor, joint action, meeting at a known time and place, planning a schedule for the flow of work, conducting a complex ritual, making joint decisions and committing to collective behavior, acting in concert in relation to outsiders, or cooperating to sanction someone-any action whose outcome depends on cooperation based on shared understandings.This complementarity in human interaction is usually made possible by participants' joint use of shared coordination devices to construct their own actions and to interpret others' actions. Moreover, unlike social insects and most eusocial mammals, humans are capable of generating an infinite number of social coordination devices based on each evolved social proclivity. They do this by combining an evolved social proclivity with different cultural paradigms. Furthermore, people can generate endless additional possibilities by combining multiple coordination devices. This generativity makes coordination devices uniquely versatile, permitting humans to use a limited num- 76Personality and Social Psychology Review

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“…Human beings have an inborn capacity to reproduce the actions and intentions of others (Hauser 1996;Honorof et al 2011;Nagell et al 1993;Whiten and Custance 1996). This imitative tendency starts immediately after birth (Meltzoff and Moore 1999) -for instance, twelve-week old infants already imitate ambient vocalic sounds (Kuhl and Meltzoff 1996) -and appears to reach its climax between two to five years of age (Horner and Whiten 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immediate and Distracted Imitation in Second-Language Speech: Unreleased Plosives In English

Rojczyk

Porzuczek

Bergier

2013

RiL

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The paper investigates immediate and distracted imitation in second-language speech using unreleased plosives. Unreleased plosives are fairly frequently found in English sequences of two stops. Polish, on the other hand, is characterised by a significant rate of releases in such sequences. This cross-linguistic difference served as material to look into how and to what extent non-native properties of sounds can be produced in immediate and distracted imitation. Thirteen native speakers of Polish first read and then imitated sequences of words with two stops straddling the word boundary. Stimuli for imitation had no release of the first stop. The results revealed that (1) a non-native feature such as the lack of the release burst can be imitated; (2) distracting imitation impedes imitative performance; (3) the type of a sequence interacts with the magnitude of an imitative effect

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Studies of Imitation in Chimpanzees and Children

Cited by 69 publications

References 28 publications

Perspectives on observational learning in animals.

Perspectives on observational learning in animals.

Complementarity Theory: Why Human Social Capacities Evolved to Require Cultural Complements

Immediate and Distracted Imitation in Second-Language Speech: Unreleased Plosives In English

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