Spontaneous imitation in the social interactions of young people with developmental delay and their adult carers

This paper examines the presence of spontaneous imitation within the social interactions of young people with developmental delay and their adult carers. There have been only a handful of observational studies examining imitation in this population, despite the relevance of such work to contemporary theoretical debates about imitation and the potential that imitation holds as an intervention for promoting communicative skills. The play of eight young people and 13 adult carers over 10 sessions at an after‐school club was videotaped and analysed for the presence and impact of spontaneous imitative bouts. Results showed that, in the majority of cases, it was adults who initiated imitative bouts and that the young people generally did not reciprocate such acts. However, even such brief instances of adult imitation were sufficient to increase the children's subsequent smiles and speech vocalizations, as well as the adults' own use of smiling, eye contact, and speech vocalizations. These findings confirm that these young people are sensitive to imitation. The implications for designing interventions that promote communicative exchanges in young people with developmental delay are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure imitative response tendencies

In his review, Ramsey (2018) argues that it is currently unclear what reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure due to lacking research on their validity and domain-specificity. In our commentary, we argue that this conclusion is based on two misconceptions, namely that automatic imitation was designed as a laboratory measure of motor mimicry and that psychometric approaches to validity can readily be applied to experimental settings. We then show that reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure covert imitative response tendencies. Furthermore, while irrelevant for their validity, we argue that these indices are associated with some, but not necessarily all, types of overt imitation. Finally, we argue that mapping out the brain networks does not suffice to understand the brain processes underlying imitative control.     

How do mothers signal shared feeling‐states to their infants? An investigation of affect attunement and imitation during the first year of life

The present study examined how mothers signal shared feeling-states to their infants. Affect attunement and imitation were investigated cross-culturally in 39 mother-infant dyads from Sweden (N = 22) and the former Yugoslavia (N = 17) during the first year of life. Video-recordings of playful interaction between mothers and their infants were analysed using the Affect Attunement Protocol. A significant negative association between imitation and age was found, while there was a significant positive association between affect attunement and age. Single occurrences of affect attunement appeared already at two or three months of age, and by 6 months of age episodes of affect attunement were more common than imitation. Frequencies of imitation and affect attunement were similar cross-culturally and in terms of gender, although there was a significant interaction between age and gender. The results suggest that the signalling of shared feeling-states is not a static process. Mothers do not signal shared feeling-states in the same manner at different ages. Imitation is the most important process during the earliest months, but is superseded by affect attunement earlier than previously thought. The functional implications of this developmental variation are discussed.     

论《太玄》对《周易》的模仿与改造

<太玄>是模仿<周易>而作,无论是在形式上还是内容上,<太玄>的模仿痕迹都很明显.从性质上看,<太玄>像孟、京易学一样,是一种天人之学.<太玄>的独创性在于体例上采用"三、九"系统;赞辞以生动形象的比喻直接说明事理;<太玄数>所说的筮法仅是扬雄的一个小把戏,没什么实际用途,而他又把五刑、律吕、月令等方面的内容引入<太玄>,以使其也具有"以卜筮者尚其占"的功用.     

The monologue of the double: Allocentric reduplication of the own voice alters bodily self-perception

During autoscopic phenomena, people perceive a double of themselves in extrapersonal space. Such clinical allocentric self-experiences sometimes co-occur with auditory hallucinations, yet experimental setups to induce similar illusions in healthy participants have generally neglected acoustic cues. We investigated whether feeling the presence of an auditory double could be provoked experimentally by recording healthy participants’ own versus another person’s voice and movements using binaural headphones from an egocentric (the participants' own) and an allocentric (a dummy head located elsewhere) perspective. When hearing themselves allocentrically, participants reported feeling a self-identified presence extracorporeally, an arguably distinct quality of autoscopy. Our results suggest that participants without hallucinatory experiences localized their own voice closer to themselves compared to that of another person. Explorative findings suggest that distinct patterns for hallucinators should be further investigated. This study suggests a successful induction of the feeling of an acoustic doppelganger, bridging clinical phenomena and experimental work.     

两人和三人最后通牒博弈任务中嗓音吸引力对决策的影响

本研究用两人和三人最后通牒博弈任务探究男性嗓音吸引力对决策的影响。实验1发现, 高吸引力的嗓音会提高被试对不公平分配方案的接受率。实验2发现, 即使分配方案对第三方接受者公平, 对被试不公平, 第三方接受者的高吸引力嗓音仍然会提高被试对方案的接受率。综上, 嗓音吸引力可以诱发类似面孔吸引力的“美貌津贴”效应。     

Re‐examination of Oostenbroek et al. (2016): evidence for neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have implications for theories of social‐cognitive development. Here we identify 11 flaws in Oostenbroek et al.'s experimental design that biased the results toward null effects. We requested and obtained the authors’ raw data. Contrary to the authors’ conclusions, new analyses reveal significant tongue‐protrusion imitation at all four ages tested (1, 3, 6, and 9 weeks old). We explain how the authors missed this pattern and offer five recommendations for designing future experiments. Infant imitation raises fundamental issues about action representation, social learning, and brain–behavior relations. The debate about the origins and development of imitation reflects its importance to theories of developmental science.     

效率至上还是忠实优先:学前儿童模仿学习机制探讨

模仿是儿童学习的一种重要机制,但学前儿童在模仿他人行为的过程中,是注重效率原则而有选择性地模仿,还是注重忠实原则不加辨别地模仿?这一问题成为近10年来发展心理学,比较心理学和进化人类学中的争论问题。争论双方提供了大量实验证据支持各自观点,并提出种种假设以解释学前儿童的模仿学习机制。如基于因果关系推理角度提出自动因果编码假设和意图不清假设;基于社会交往角度提出社会依存假设和自然教育法假设等。迄今为止,尚无一个假设能解释所有证据。因此,在整合相关实验证据的基础上,提出了解释这一争论的新视角——"损益权衡"假设,即学前儿童模仿策略选择是特定情境下权衡利益与损失的过程。     

Emotion recognition and social adjustment in school–aged girls and boys

The present study investigated emotion recognition accuracy and its relation to social adjustment in 7-10 year-old children. The ability to recognize basic emotions from facial and vocal expressions was measured and compared to peer popularity and to teacher-rated social competence. The results showed that emotion recognition was related to these measures of social adjustment, but the gender of a child and emotion category affected this relationship. Emotion recognition accuracy was significantly related to social adjustment for the girls, but not for the boys. For the girls, especially the recognition of surprise was related to social adjustment. Together, these results suggest that the ability to recognize others' emotional states from nonverbal cues is an important socio-cognitive ability for school-aged girls.     

Generalized imitation of facial models by children with autism

Imitation is an essential skill in the acquisition of language and communication skills. An initial phase in teaching young children with autism to engage in appropriate affective responding may be to teach the imitation of facial models. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, imitation training (consisting of modeling, prompting, differential reinforcement, and error correction) was introduced successively across 3 participants. Low and inconsistent rates of imitation of facial models were observed in baseline. All of the participants learned to imitate some of the facial models presented during imitation training, but only 2 of the 3 participants demonstrated generalized responding across stimuli.