Three-Year-Olds Overimitate when Actions are Presented as Conventions

Abstract

Imitation is a universal social learning mechanism, observed in all countries, across all ages. Three- to 5-year-olds are so prone to imitation that they occasionally exhibit “overimitation” – that is, they imitate actions that are apparently superfluous to achieving a particular goal. One explanation for overimitation is that children believe that there is something causal about the superfluous actions. An alternative explanation is that children believe that the superfluous actions reflect a particular “style” of performing the action that may be conventional within the community. The goal of the present study is to address these two possibilities by investigating whether children overimitate equally from knowledgeable and ignorant models. We reasoned that if children believe that the actor’s superfluous actions are causal, they might overimitate anytime those intentional actions precede the achievement of a goal. In contrast, if children are more concerned about conventional ways of doing things, they might only overimitate superfluous actions when it is clear that they are being presented as conventions. Sixty-eight 3-year-old children were allowed to use a novel toy machine after causally relevant and superfluous actions on the toy were demonstrated by a knowledgeable or ignorant model. Results suggested that children overimitated more when the model was present (versus only caregiver present) and when the model was knowledgeable (versus ignorant) of the toy machine. These findings suggest that children do not simply overimitate any intentional actions modelled by actors that precede a goal. Instead, they selectively overimitate when there is evidence that those actions are conventional.