Infants show stability of goal-directed imitation

Sakkalou, Elena, Ellis-Davies, Katherine, Fowler, Nia, Hilbrink, Elma and Gattis, Merideth Leigh ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8665-7577 2013. Infants show stability of goal-directed imitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 114 (1) , pp. 1-9. 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.09.005

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Abstract

Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across perceptually and causally dissimilar imitation tasks. To this end, we employed a longitudinal within-participants design to compare the performance of 37 infants on two imitation tasks, with one administered at 13 months and one administered at 14 months. Infants who selectively imitated goal-directed actions in an object-cued task at 13 months also selectively imitated goal-directed actions in a vocal-cued task at 14 months. We conclude that goal-directed imitation reflects a general ability to interpret behavior in terms of mental states.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Medicine Schools > Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Imitation; Goal understanding; Individual differences; Action understanding; Prosody; Infancy; Longitudinal
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0022-0965
Funders:	Leverhulme Trust
Last Modified:	24 Oct 2022 09:58
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/42742

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