Browsing by Subject "Imitation"
Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item The art of convention : cognitive foundations of cultural learning(2013-12) Clegg, Jennifer Marie; Legare, Cristine H.While much research has explored the role of imitation in children’s learning of instrumental skills (Call et al., 2005; Carpenter et al., 2002; Gleissner et al., 2000; Lyons et al., 2007; Whiten et al., 2009), very little is known about the link between imitation and the acquisition of cultural conventional behavior. New research suggests that children rely on a variety of social and contextual cues when determining when to imitate with high or low fidelity and that these cues may reflect children’s interpretation of a task as either instrumental or conventional (Herrmann et al., 2013). Previous work examining children’s imitation has primarily used either unfamiliar, causally opaque object manipulation tasks (Herrmann et al., 2013) or complex instrumental tasks that make use of materials used in novel ways (Lyons et al., 2007; Williamson & Meltzoff, 2011), but research has yet to explore children’s imitation when presented with a causally accessible and familiar instrumental task. Drawing from an oft-observed classroom craft, the present study examined children’s reasoning about a necklace-making task when they were presented with either a conventional or an instrumental framing for the task and the cognitive consequences of this reasoning.Item Contextualizing children’s imitation : an examination of children’s flexible use of imitation in distinct cultural and child-rearing contexts(2016-05) Clegg, Jennifer Marie; Legare, Cristine H.; Bannard, Colin; Booth, Amy; Buss, David; Markman, Art; Yeager, David SDespite experimental and ethnographic evidence of imitation in the context of skill-based or instrumental learning there has not yet been a systematic cross-cultural account of imitative behavior in the context of learning cultural conventions. Moreover, very little is known about how children’s social interaction with their caregivers scaffolds the development of imitation. New research suggests that the causal opacity associated with conventions results in high fidelity imitation due to children’s interpretation of a behavior as a conventional act (based on social conventions) rather than an instrumental act. This dissertation examines children’s flexible imitation based on their interpretation of the purpose of a behavior in two different cultural settings – the U.S. and Vanuatu, a Melanesian island nation and in natural child-rearing settings. This research addresses a significant gap in the current literature, as much of the work on the development of imitation has been conducted in Western, single-child settings.Item The effect of model attractiveness on imitative fidelity in children(2015-08) Morales, Frances Rachel; Legare, Cristine H.; Buss, David MChildren and adults attribute positive personality traits and behaviors to people higher in physical attractiveness and negative traits and behaviors to people lower in attractiveness. These biases may be adaptations to evaluate information about social status. The present study builds upon social accounts of imitation by examining the effect of model attractiveness on imitative fidelity in childhood. In Study 1 (N = 150, 3--7-year-olds), the attractiveness of a model demonstrating an action sequence was manipulated to study the effect of priming high attractiveness versus low attractiveness on children's imitation of an instrumental task. Children's performance was coded for imitative fidelity and children's explanations for their behavior. I predicted that imitative fidelity would be highest when children see the actions being demonstrated by a more attractive model. I predicted also that older children would engage in higher imitative fidelity than younger children, a finding that may be due to increasing sensitivity to social conventions with age. The mean imitative fidelity summary score was higher for older children compared to the summary score for younger children. But contrary to prediction, there was not a significant difference in imitative fidelity across conditions. Likewise, the explanations provided by children for their copying behavior in the high attractive condition did not differ from the explanations provided by children in the low attractive condition. In Study 2, the same predictions were tested after correcting methodological flaws of Study 1. Study 2 (N = 79, 3--7-year-olds) has the same design of Study 1 with only two modifications relating to length of exposure to the model's face and to the instructions given to the child participant. As in Study 1, the data from Study 2 revealed an effect of age on imitation but not an effect of attractiveness. Although the results from these studies were not conclusive regarding the role of attractiveness, a follow up study with a different experimental manipulation may yield evidence in support of the hypothesis that the degree of imitation can be modulated by the attractiveness of the model.Item Imitation of words and actions across cultures(2015-08) Klinger, Jörn; Bannard, Colin; Beaver, David; Echols, Catharine; Legare, Cristine; Quinto-Pozos, David; Woodbury, AnthonyHumans imitate in a unique way. They imitate selectively, that is, they imitate intentional actions at a higher rate than accidental ones. At the same time humans tend to faithfully imitate actions that do not seem to be relevant to an end goal. Selectively imitating intentional actions allows us to learn efficiently from others, while faithful imitation makes it possible to acquire complex cultural conventions without immediately understanding the contribution of each of its components. Recent studies suggest that this unique way of imitating is universal across cultures and enables humans to develop complex cultural practices that set them apart from other species. The evidence so far, however, is almost exclusively based on studies about the imitation of actions, while little work has been done on the imitation of language. Language is arguably humanity's most important cultural product and unlike instrumental actions that are restricted by the laws of physics, language is a fairly arbitrary system of conventions and thus more prone to cross-cultural variance. Claims about the cultural universality in imitation learning thus need to be supported by data from verbal imitation. The present work addresses this point in four studies. The first three studies tested children's imitation of adjectives in different contexts across three different cultures: a small indigenous community in Mexico and two western large-scale societies. In various verbal imitation tasks we found cross-cultural differences. We propose that these differences are due to differences in the amount of time spent in dyadic caregiver-child interaction in indigenous and western culture. Further, the data suggest that this cultural variation arises from the fact that humans across cultures in both verbal and instrumental tasks imitate selectively when the function of an element is transparent to them. When its function is opaque they do the safe thing: faithfully imitate. This account is tested in study four. In an instrumental task adults and children imitated faithfully when the function of the actions performed was opaque, but not when they were transparent. This allows us to propose that the cross-cultural differences we observe are thus due to differences in experience that make different aspects of language use more or less transparent to learners.Item The Impact of Imitation on Vaccination Behavior in Social Contact Networks(Public Library of Science, 2012-04-12) Ndeffo Mbah, Martial L.; Liu, Jingzhou; Bauch, Chris T.; Tekel, Yonas I.; Medlock, Jan; Meyers, Lauren Ancel; Galvani, Alison P.Previous game-theoretic studies of vaccination behavior typically have often assumed that populations are homogeneously mixed and that individuals are fully rational. In reality, there is heterogeneity in the number of contacts per individual, and individuals tend to imitate others who appear to have adopted successful strategies. Here, we use network-based mathematical models to study the effects of both imitation behavior and contact heterogeneity on vaccination coverage and disease dynamics. We integrate contact network epidemiological models with a framework for decision-making, within which individuals make their decisions either based purely on payoff maximization or by imitating the vaccination behavior of a social contact. Simulations suggest that when the cost of vaccination is high imitation behavior may decrease vaccination coverage. However, when the cost of vaccination is small relative to that of infection, imitation behavior increases vaccination coverage, but, surprisingly, also increases the magnitude of epidemics through the clustering of non-vaccinators within the network. Thus, imitation behavior may impede the eradication of infectious diseases. Calculations that ignore behavioral clustering caused by imitation may significantly underestimate the levels of vaccination coverage required to attain herd immunity.Item Ritual increases children's preferences for in-group members(2015-05) Wen, Nicole Jee; Legare, Cristine H.; Markman, Art BThis study examined the impact of ritual on children's in-group affiliation (N = 71, 4-11-year-old children). A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool program setting to test the influence of a ritual versus a control task on three key outcomes--affiliation with in-group members, expectations for inclusion by in-group members, and selective group fusion with in-group members. Results from converging measures support the hypothesis that the experience of participating in a ritual increases in-group preference to a greater degree than group activity alone. The results provide insight into the early-developing preference for in-group members and are consistent with the proposal that rituals facilitate in-group cohesion.