1. Infants show stability of goal-directed imitation
- Author
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Sakkalou, Elena, Ellis-Davies, Kate, Fowler, Nia C., Hilbrink, Elma E., and Gattis, Merideth
- Subjects
- *
INFANT psychology , *GOAL (Psychology) , *INTENTION , *SELECTIVITY (Psychology) , *IMITATIVE behavior , *GENERAL factor (Psychology) , *CHILD psychology - Abstract
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 13months and one administered at 14months. Infants who selectively imitated goal-directed actions in an object-cued task at 13months also selectively imitated goal-directed actions in a vocal-cued task at 14months. We conclude that goal-directed imitation reflects a general ability to interpret behavior in terms of mental states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2013
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