Imitation in Infancy: A Critical Review

Abstract

Publisher Summary Imitation plays an important role in the development of early socialization and language. The imitative behavior in infants and young children has been extensively studied from different theoretical perspectives. Cognitive researchers stress the operations of covert cognitive processes underlying imitation, and behavioral researchers emphasize observable and measurable events in the demonstration of functional relations between imitative behavior and environmental stimuli. In this chapter, imitation is generally defined according to Uzgiris's observation that “imitation is said to occur whenever a subject duplicates the behavior enacted by a model as a result of having observed the model.” This definition, although broad, underscore the potential of imitation as a mechanism for the acquisition of new behavior. This chapter investigates what is known about the origins of imitation in infancy. It provides a review of the literature to examine early conceptualizations of infant imitation, the developmental course of diverse imitative responses, variables affecting infant imitative performance, imitation and mother-infant interaction, procedures that evoke imitative responding in infants, the issue of neonatal imitation of nonvisible actions, and past and future trends in the study of infant imitation.