Imitation by combination: preschool age children evidence summative imitation in a novel problem-solving task.

Francys Subiaul,Elizabeth E Price,Alexander Etz,Edward Krajkowski

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01410

Francys Subiaul, Elizabeth E Price + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01410

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Abstract

Children are exceptional, even ‘super,’ imitators but comparatively poor independent problem-solvers or innovators. Yet, imitation and innovation are both necessary components of cumulative cultural evolution. Here, we explored the relationship between imitation and innovation by assessing children’s ability to generate a solution to a novel problem by imitating two different action sequences demonstrated by two different models, an example of imitation by combination, which we refer to as “summative imitation.” Children (N = 181) from 3 to 5 years of age and across three experiments were tested in a baseline condition or in one of six demonstration conditions, varying in the number of models and opening techniques demonstrated. Across experiments, more than 75% of children evidenced summative imitation, opening both compartments of the problem box and retrieving the reward hidden in each. Generally, learning different actions from two different models was as good (and in some cases, better) than learning from 1 model, but the underlying representations appear to be the same in both demonstration conditions. These results show that summative imitation not only facilitates imitation learning but can also result in new solutions to problems, an essential feature of innovation and cumulative culture.

Highlights

Human children have been described as “cultural magnets” (Flynn, 2008), absorbing and transmitting the habits of their parents and society as a whole with exquisite fidelity
While researchers disagree as to whether high-fidelity imitation is necessary for cumulative culture, there is a general consensus that cumulative culture requires both the creation and social transfer of others’ responses and knowledge (Tomasello et al, 2005; Boyd et al, 2011; Dean et al, 2012; Lewis and Laland, 2012; Legare and Nielsen, in press)
To date, these research questions have been explored independently of one another, with research focusing on children’s ability to innovate or imitate in problem-solving tasks separately (e.g., Cutting et al, 2011, 2014; Beck et al, 2012). One reason for this being that while innovation has been conceptualized as an asocial— individual—learning process (Ramsey et al, 2007), imitation is thought of as the quintessential social learning mechanism (Over and Carpenter, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

Human children have been described as “cultural magnets” (Flynn, 2008), absorbing and transmitting the habits of their parents and society as a whole with exquisite fidelity. In a series of studies, Beck et al (2011), Chappell et al (2013) demonstrated that children younger than seven excel at imitating tool-making for the purposes of achieving a goal (i.e., tool-manufacture), but these same children cannot independently make the same tool to achieve the same goal (i.e., tool-innovation). This result is not restricted to Summative imitation urban children who might have few pressures to innovate given the availability of mass-produced toys. These results indicate that while humans excel at imitating and propagating existing cultural practices (i.e., cultural transmission), they are poor at creating novel cultural variants, themselves

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