Patterns of imitation in mentally retarded children

Abstract.— In this report, the interchange theory of imitation was extended to mentally retarded children. Retardates were expected to observe and copy adults, using external cues and internal controls as aids. In Experiment I external cues were studied. Twenty-four speaking and 24 non-speaking retardates were paired with adults who gave half the children instructions to copy and the other half additional verbal and gestural cues. Non-speaking retardates receiving frequent cues attended and copied better than those getting initial instructions, gestural cues being equally or more effective than verbal ones. Speaking retardates getting repeated cues finished copying sooner than those getting only instructions, verbal and gestural cues being equally effective. In Experiment II internal controls over appropriate imitation were studied. Twenty-two retardates were trained to sit, observe and copy their teachers in a two-month program. Training was evaluated in situations where copying or playing was signalled. Overall, children attended and copied more in the appropriate situation. However, sitting, attention, and copying increased non-specifically in both situations, and initial situational differences in copying were not observed after treatment. The interchange theory was revised, and implications for attention-deficit and verbal self-control theories were discussed. Notions of "generalized imitation" were criticized.     

Effects of social demands on generalized imitation learning in retarded children

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of social-setting characteristics in the acquisition and maintenance of generalized imitative behavior. A total of 50 imitative moderately retarded children were each assigned to 1 of 5 treatment conditions. The groups were matched with respect to each S's pretreatment imitative level. It was found that the degree of social demand to imitate differentially contributes to the occurrence of generalized imitative behavior. These findings are discussed in terms of recent explanations of the occurrence of generalized imitation learning and Zigler's position concerning the problem-solving style of retarded children.This study is based on a Master's thesis submitted by the first author to Syracuse University and supervised by the second author. The authors wish to thank Carl Petrontoni, Marshall Beckman, Sheri Saloff, Gary George, Joseph Koury, and Ellen Kasher, who served as research assistants. Special thanks are given to Willian R. Hootsy, Director of Children's Services at the Onondaga County Center for Retarded Children, for making the children available for this research. Portions of this study were prepared while the second author was on leave of absence to the Bavarian State Institute for Early Childhood Education, Munich, Germany.     

Comparison of nonretarded and mentally retarded children on tasks involving direct and rule-governed imitation.

The influence of intellectual level and social reinforcement on imitation learning was examined. Tasks involving direct and rule-governed imitation of a mode were presented to 20 mentally retarded and 20 nonretarded children. The children within each group were randomly assigned to either an affective ("good-fine") or an informative ("correct-right") social reinforcement condition. Reinforcement, administered on a fixed ration (FR4) schedule, was contingent on the child's imitative behavior. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that both the Population X Reinforcement Type interaction and the Reinforcement main effect were significant. Univariate follow-up tests showed that only rule-governed imitation contributed significantly to the multivariate effects. Analysis of simple effects indicated that retarded children performed optimally under affective reinforcement, while the nonretarded children performed highest under informative reinforcement.     

Causes and consequences of imitation

Recent behavioural and neuroscientific research concerning imitation has revealed evidence of experience-dependent imitation in chimpanzees and birds, wide ranging imitation deficits in autism, and unintentional imitation in adult humans. This review examines these findings and also evaluates evidence of neonatal imitation and intentional imitation in infancy, and evidence suggesting that the left inferior frontal gyrus is specialized for imitation. At the theoretical level, the empirical findings support the view that the perceptual-motor translation that is a unique and defining property of imitation depends primarily on direct links between sensory and motor representations established through correlated experience of observing movements and carrying them out.     

The effect of enactment upon sentence imitation in preschool children

Preschool children imitated two matched lists of sentences varying in length, in syntactic complexity, and in semantic complexity. Sentences on one list were acted out with toys prior to imitating them. For 3-year-olds, enactment increased retention of all sentential variables: number of words, number of frames, number of propositions, and syntax. For children younger than 3 years, enactment increased only the number of words retained, while for children older than 4 years, enactment had a minimal effect on all sentential variables. In a second experiment, prior enactment had long-term effects on the degree to which children's spontaneous stories about the toys resembled the previous sentences that they had been given to imitate. Long-term effects, however, did not extend to retention of syntax. Enactment appears to increase both young children's interest in a sentence imitation task and the amount of semantic encoding in which they engage. Its effect, however, is mediated by the degree of mastery of relevant linguistic rules.Some of these data were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, April 1983. The authors would like to thank Lorraine Chiasson, Judith Codd, and Susan Saba for their assistance with the data analysis.     

Prosocial consequences of imitation

Research has shown that helping behavior can be primed easily. However, helping decreases significantly in the presence of inhibition cues, signaling high costs for the executor. On the other hand, multiple studies demonstrated that helping behavior increases after being mimicked. The present study investigated whether imitation still increases helping when more substantial costs are involved. Helping behavior was operationalized as the willingness to accompany the confederate on a 15-20 minute walk to the train station. Results show that even in the face of these high costs, participants who were mimicked agreed more often to help the confederate than participants who were anti-mimicked. These findings suggest that mimicry not only makes people more helpful when it comes to small favors, but also allows them to ignore the substantial costs possibly involved in helping others.     

The phonetic effect in preschool children: The influence of overt rehearsal and verbal instructions

Preschoolers' serial matching of picture lists composed of either phonetically similar or unrelated items was compared under three types of conditions. The lower retention of phonetic lists had been used as an index of verbal mediation by Conrad (1971, 1972) who found that preschoolers did not show differential retention, and hence no verbal encoding, even when they were required to label overtly. This result was replicated and also obtained in a condition which emphasized the verbal aspects of the task. However, a significant phonetic effect and higher overall retention resulted from a condition which required overt, cumulative rehearsal. Alternative interpretations of the influence of rehearsal on the phonetic effect were offered.     

The effect of within-pair variation and instructions on the transposition behavior of kindergarten and third grade children

The reported studies examined the test choices of kindergarten and third-grade children in the two-stimulus size transposition problem in response to variations in (a) the magnitude of the size difference between two objects (the within-pair difference), (b) the distance between training and test pairs (“near” and “far” tests), and (c) verbal instructions. It was hypothesized that third graders would be sensitive to variations in the degree of the difference between two objects and to instructions which identify specific aspects of the stimulus array. In contrast, kindergarteners were expected to base their choices upon the direction of the difference, and thus transpose regardless of within-pair variations and instructions. Results generally confirmed these expectations, supporting the notion that children at these ages differ in their organization of the stimulus field and in the scale of measurement they apply to objects differing in size.     

The effect of tangible reinforcement on the learning and retention of programmed material in academically retarded children

The effect of three reinforcement conditions was determined with respect to the learning and retention of a commercially available program purporting to teach simple nouns. The addition of candy reward to a novel method of presenting knowledge of results produced no change in performance when given on a continuous schedule, but reduced rate of responding when given on a partial schedule, i.e., only terninal frames.     

Differential effects of instructions and consequences on human conditional discrimination performance

Two studies evaluated the differential behavioral effects of instructions and feedback in matching-to-sample procedures. In Experiment 1, 20 college students received true or false instructions and trial-by-trial or delayed feedback in three phases. In a fourth, final phase the instructions remained the same, but feedback changed from trial-by-trial to delayed, or from delayed to trial-by-trial. In Experiment 2, half of another 20 participants received true instructions during three phases, followed by false instruction in a fourth phase; the other half of the participants received false instructions during three phases, followed by true instructions in the fourth phase. Feedback sequences were as in Experiment 1. The results of both experiments revealed historical effects of instructions and feedback. Most participants demonstrated strong instructional control, overriding the control by contingencies. These results suggest that the present procedure offers optimal possibilities to make the differential effects of instructions and feedback on human behavior clearly identifiable when conditional discrimination tasks are used.     

Mimicry for money: Behavioral consequences of imitation

Two experiments investigated the idea that mimicry leads to pro-social behavior. It was hypothesized that mimicking the verbal behavior of customers would increase the size of tips. In Experiment 1, a waitress either mimicked half her customers by literally repeating their order or did not mimic her customers. It was found that she received significantly larger tips when she mimicked her customers than when she did not. In Experiment 2, in addition to a mimicry- and non-mimicry condition, a baseline condition was included in which the average tip was assessed prior to the experiment. The results indicated that, compared to the baseline, mimicry leads to larger tips. These results demonstrate that mimicry can be advantageous for the imitator because it can make people more generous.     

Feedback and fidelity: Effects of contingent consequences on accuracy of imitation

Accuracy of imitation by sixty kindergarten subjects was examined using a task in which a female adult modeled a series of pegboard patterns and delivered accuracy-contingent feedback. Four methods of feedback and a nofeedback control were compared. All four feedback groups were more accurate than the control group. The feedback conditions were: positive only, negative only, positive and negative, and negative with correction. The last condition resulted in greater accuracy than the others, which did not differ. All groups, including the control, improved significantly over trials. Accuracy of performance on interspersed, nonfeedback trials was maintained by feedback to the other patterns. Finally, imitation of repeating stimulus patterns did not differ from performance with nonrepeating patterns.     

Multiple imitation mechanisms in children

Four studies using a computerized paradigm investigated whether children's imitation performance is content-specific and to what extent dependent on other cognitive processes such as trial-and-error learning, recall, and observational learning. Experiment 1 showed that 3-year-olds could successfully imitate what we call novel cognitive rules (e.g., first → second → third), which involved responding to 3 different pictures whose spatial configuration varied randomly from trial to trial. However, these same children failed to imitate what we call novel motor-spatial rules (e.g., up → down → right), which involved responding to 3 identical pictures that remained in a fixed spatial configuration from trial to trial. Experiment 2 showed that this dissociation was not due to a general difficulty in encoding motor-spatial content, as children successfully recalled, following a 30-s delay, a new motor-spatial sequence that had been learned by trial and error. Experiment 3 replicated these results and further demonstrated that 3-year-olds can infer a novel motor-spatial sequence following observation of a partially correct and partially incorrect response-a dissociation between imitation and observational learning (or emulation learning). Finally, Experiment 4 presented 3-year-olds with "familiar" motor-spatial sequences that involved making a linear response (e.g., left → middle → right) as well as "novel" motor-spatial sequences (e.g., right → up → down) used in Experiments 1-3 that were nonlinear and always involved a change in direction. Children had no difficulty imitating familiar motor-spatial sequences but again failed to imitate novel motor-spatial sequences. These results suggest that there may be multiple, dissociable imitation learning mechanisms that are content-specific. More importantly, the development of these imitation systems appears to be independent of the operations of other cognitive systems, including trial and error learning, recall, and observational learning.     

The effect of instructions on the judgement of brightness

A brightness constancy experiment using ten subjects showed that different instructions significantly affect the subject's PSE judgement. Variations in the reflectance of the standard target and in the background and illumination of the variable target did not influence the effect of different instructions. The use of the D-ratio as constancy index in this study confirms an earlier theoretical finding that other brightness constancy ratios introduce an artefact into experimental results.     

Effects of vicarious consequences on imitation and recall: Some developmental findings

Two experiments were conducted using a multiple-item list in which each item consisted of a pair of pictures. The model indicated which member of each pair she preferred and was either positively reinforced, negatively reinforced, or received neutral consequences. The S then indicated his preferences (imitation test). Following the imitation test, each S was asked to recall the model's choices. Age was an independent variable in both experiments. Imitation scores of the children, preschool to sixth-grade age range, were strongly influenced by differential vicarious reinforcement. Vicarious reward increased imitation and vicarious punishment decreased it. College students' imitation scores were only minimally influenced by differential vicarious reinforcement. Within- and between-subjects variations of vicarious reinforcement had similar effects. Recall scores were surprisingly high and were not significantly influenced by differential vicarious reinforcement. Interestingly, age and percentage of correct recall were negatively correlated.     

Motivational influences on compliance with and consequences of instructions to suppress stereotypes

Two experiments investigated differences in compliance with instructions to suppress stereotypes as a function of prejudice-related motivations. In Experiment 1, only participants identified as high in motivation to control prejudice [Dunton, B. C., & Fazio, R. H. (1997). An individual difference measure of motivation to control prejudiced reactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 316-326] complied with suppression instructions. These participants experienced post-suppression rebound effects, but only if they were also high in prejudice. In Experiment 2, only participants identified as high in external motivation to respond without prejudice [Plant, E. A., & Devine, P. G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 811-832] complied with instructions to suppress. These participants later experienced stereotype rebound effects, but only if they were also low in internal motivation to respond without prejudice. These findings suggest that motivational factors play an important role in determining not only the outcome of suppression, but also the choice to attempt suppression in the first place.     

The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children

An experiment on the role of the language of instruction in mediating responses to social pressure was conducted with a sample of 41 Russian-born adolescents who had recently immigrated to Israel. The subjects were asked to respond to a series of conflict situations in which they were told that either the experimenters, their own parents, or their peers would see their answers. Instructions were given once in Russian and once in Hebrew. Contrary to the principal hypothesis, when subjected to pressure from adults the children gave more conventional moral responses under Hebrew than under Russian instructions. The result was interpreted as reflecting the tendency to respond more moralistically to the language of authority, which, for the emigréchildren, shifted from Russian to Hebrew. Regardless of the language of administration, the scores for the emigréchildren fell between those for Soviet and Israeli youngsters, but they were closer to the latter. Within the sample, the longer a child lived in one or the other society, the more his response to social pressure resembled the modal reaction of children in that society. Children from families who had or had not spoken Yiddish in the home showed marked differences in response, with the former resembling the Israeli and the latter the typical Soviet reaction. The results were interpreted as reflecting the capacity of children to adapt to conflicting socialization settings both within and across cultures.     

The effect of instructions on performance in the Wason selection task

The effect of instructions on performance on the standard abstract form of Wason’s selection task was examined. Instructions to determine whether or not the statement is violated did not lead to an increase in correct responding, contrary to previous suggestions that such instructions would induce falsification strategies, but rather to an increase in verification bias. Instructions to determine whether the statement is true or false led to increased variability in performance, supporting the suggestion that such instructions are inherently ambiguous. Thus, the results demonstrate that the form of instructions can have a significant effect on performance in the selection task. Verification bias did better as an explanation of the data than did matching bias, which only fared well when its predictions coincided with those of verification bias. A substantial proportion of the data was unaccounted for by either of these strategies, which is consistent with the findings of a number of other recent studies.     

Attentional consequences of outcome-related motivational states: Congruent,incongruent, and focusing effects

Two experiments employed a game context to examine the effects of positive and negative feedback on the processing of targets varying in incentive properties. While half the targets carried no value, the others were assigned either a positive incentive value (where points could be gained) or a negative value (where points could be lost), and either a large incentive size (worth 5 points) or a small size (worth 2 points). Feedback from the previous trial was found to exert three effects on subsequent targets. A congruent effect appeared in the faster processing of large targets that matched the positive or negative valence of the previous feedback signal. An incongruent effect was evident in the delays in shifting attention from pretarget cues that contrasted in valence to the previous feedback. A focusing effect was reflected in the general delays following negative feedback in responding to targets with no value. In addition to these outcome influences, processing was generally more efficient for targets carrying positive than negative incentive value, and for targets of large than small size. These findings are discussed in terms of contemporary models of motivation and information processing.