Deferred Imitation Research Articles

Toddler's memory and media-Picture book reading and watching video content are associated with memory at 2years of age.

Memory develops across the course of the first years of life and is influenced by daily experiences, such as exposure to media like books and television. Memory as tapped by Deferred imitation (DI) requires that toddlers form a representation of the target actions that they can later use to reproduce the actions and in addition to measuring memory for real live events, it can also be used to measure memory for events viewed through media. Toddlers are frequently exposed to multiple forms of digital media in addition to more traditional forms of picture book reading. In a within-subjects design, memory was assessed with a DI task in 2-year-olds (n=89) using the Frankfurt Imitation Test. Deferred imitation was assessed after live and video demonstrations. Parents completed a survey about children's media use. Picture book reading for less than 30min a day predicted lower memory scores for actions demonstrated live. Watching video content for more than 1h a day predicted lower memory scores for actions demonstrated on video. Results are interpreted in terms of individual differences in experiences of traditional and digital media and the development of symbolic understanding.

Memory and Executive Function Development in Baby 12-24 Months: A Screening Method by Mothers

The development of memory and executive function in infants is significant for the development of the same aspects at a later stage since during this stage of development, infants are actively developing their core executive function and memory skills. However, research on these two aspects in infants aged 12-24 months in the Indonesian context is still rare. Furthermore, the availability of screening instruments that can be used by mothers to monitor the development of the two aspects is limited. This study aims to develop a method of screening on memory development and executive function that mothers can use for their babies aged 12-24 months. By knowing their child's development in the domain-specific exhibited by the Deferred imitation (DI) task and the A-not-B task, mothers can better understand and obtain feedback regarding their child's development milestones, particularly memory development and executive function. Mothers (N=21) who were involved in this study, filled in pre and post-tests on memory and executive function development, received training to conduct screening by carrying out those 2 tasks to their babies. The mothers were asked to fill in the maternal responsiveness scale to find out the extent of the mother's response rate during interactions with their babies and to see the relationship between their responsiveness and the results of the screening. This study employed a within-subject pre-and posttestdesign. Data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Qualitative data were gathered through Focus Group Discussion to explore the experiences of mothers when conducting tasks and screening on their babies. The results of this study indicate that the screening method can help maternal participants identify the emergence of memory abilities and executive skills. The screening method used is quite easy and can be carried out by the participants in daily life. However, they need to read the module several times to understand the procedures. Additional analysis showed that maternal responsiveness was associated with a child's better ability to shift from condition A to condition B, but did not confirm an association with DI.

Developmental trend towards exact imitation in the second year of life

Findings from previous cross-sectional studies showed that while toddlers around their first birthday imitate selectively, that is, they systematically omit some kinds of target action steps or they copy only the goal, but not the means of the modeled actions, older toddlers imitate more exactly. The aim of the present article is to provide longitudinal evidence for this developmental trend and to investigate how imitation of different kinds of target action steps contributes to inter-individual differences in overall imitation performance. The present analysis of longitudinal deferred imitation data contrasted toddlers’ imitation of functional and relevant (FURE) versus arbitrary and irrelevant (ARIR) target action steps at the ages of 18 and 24 months. The results show that the difference between the imitation rates of these two kinds of target action steps decreased with age, supporting the developmental trend from selective towards more exact imitation. In addition, findings of the present analyses point to the prominent role of toddlers’ imitation of arbitrary and irrelevant target action steps in shaping inter-individual variability of overall deferred imitation performance.

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm.

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have developed a non-verbal means of assessing recall memory known as the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm. In one variant of the procedure, participants are presented with novel three-dimensional stimuli for a brief baseline period before a researcher demonstrates a series of actions that culminate in an end- or goal-state. The participant is allowed to imitate the demonstrated actions immediately, after a delay, or both. Recall performance is then compared to baseline or to performance on novel control sequences presented at the same session; memory can be assessed for the individual target actions and the order in which they were completed. This procedure is an accepted analogue to the verbal report techniques used with adults, and it has served to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. In addition, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been modified and adapted to answer questions relevant to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The broad utility and application of imitation paradigms is discussed, along with limitations of the approach and directions for future research.

Early declarative memory predicts productive language: A longitudinal study of deferred imitation and communication at 9 and 16 months

Deferred imitation (DI) may be regarded as an early declarative-like memory ability shaping the infant’s ability to learn about novelties and regularities of the surrounding world. In the current longitudinal study, infants were assessed at 9 and 16months. DI was assessed using five novel objects. Each infant’s communicative development was measured by parental questionnaires. The results indicate stability in DI performance and early communicative development between 9 and 16months. The early achievers at 9months were still advanced at 16months. Results also identified a predictive relationship between the infant’s gestural development at 9months and the infant’s productive and receptive language at 16months. Moreover, the results show that declarative memory, measured with DI, and gestural communication at 9months independently predict productive language at 16months. These findings suggest a connection between the ability to form non-linguistic and linguistic mental representations. These results indicate that the child’s DI ability when predominantly preverbal might be regarded as an early domain-general declarative memory ability underlying early productive language development.

Preschool children's proto-episodic memory assessed by deferred imitation

In two experiments, both employing deferred imitation, we studied the developmental origins of episodic memory in two- to three-year-old children by adopting a “minimalist” view of episodic memory based on its What–When–Where (“WWW”: spatiotemporal plus semantic) content. We argued that the temporal element within spatiotemporal should be the order/simultaneity of the event elements, but that it is not clear whether the spatial content should be egocentric or allocentric. We also argued that episodic recollection should be configural (tending towards all-or-nothing recall of the WWW elements). Our first deferred imitation experiment, using a two-dimensional (2D) display, produced superior-to-chance performance after 2.5 years but no evidence of configural memory. Moreover, performance did not differ from that on a What–What–What control task. Our second deferred imitation study required the children to reproduce actions on an object in a room, thereby affording layout-based spatial cues. In this case, not only was there superior-to-chance performance after 2.5 years but memory was also configural at both ages. We discuss the importance of allocentric spatial cues in episodic recall in early proto-episodic memory and reflect on the possible role of hippocampal development in this process.

Age‐Related Changes in Spreading Activation During Infancy

The concept of spreading activation describes how retrieval of one memory cues retrieval of other memories that are associated with it. This study explored spreading activation in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-old infants. Infants (n = 144) learned two tasks within the same experimental session; one task, deferred imitation (DI), is typically remembered longer than the other task, visual recognition memory (VRM). At all ages, retrieval of the DI memory facilitated retrieval of the VRM memory, but the conditions under which this spreading activation occurred changed as a function of age. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of mnemonic networks during infancy and the value of studying infants for our understanding of memory more generally.

Associative learning measured with ERP predicts deferred imitation using a strict observation only design in 14 to15 month old children

Deferred imitation (DI) is an established procedure for behavioral measurement of early declarative-like memories in infancy and previous work has indicated a link between this type of memory and brain potentials in infants. The present study compared infants' memory performance in this paradigm with electrophysiological indices of associative learning. Thirty children (M = 14.5 months) participated, of which 15 (8 boys) had acceptable event-related potentials (ERP) recordings that could be included in the final analysis. Deferred imitation was measured with an observation-only procedure using three actions and a 30 min delay. ERP was recorded with a high-density electrode net (128 electrodes) during associative learning. Change scores based on Nc, a middle latency component associated with attentional processes, predicted deferred imitation performance. Thus, associative learning measured with ERP predicts deferred imitation using a strict observation only design in 14 to 15 month old children.

A developmental approach of imitation to study the emergence of mirror neurons in a sensory-motor controller

Mirror neurons have often been considered as the explanation of how primates can imitate. In this paper, we show that a simple neural network architecture that learns visuo-motor associations can be enough to let low level imitation emerge without a priori mirror neurons. Adding sequence learning mechanisms and action inhibition allows to perform deferred imitation of gestures demonstrated visually or by body manipulation. With the building of a cognitive map giving the capability of learning plans, we can study in our model the emergence of both low level and high level resonances highlighted by Rizzolatti et al.

Exploring memory in infancy: deferred imitation and the development of declarative memory

Imitation is an important means by which infants learn new behaviours. When infants do not have the opportunity to immediately reproduce observed actions, they may form a memory representation of the event which can guide their behaviour when a similar situation is encountered again. Imitation procedures can, therefore, provide insight into infant memory. The deferred imitation paradigm requires a modelled action to be reproduced following a delay, without prior motor practice. As such, deferred imitation procedures have been proposed to tap declarative memory abilities in non-verbal populations such as infants. Contrary to the popular belief that infants form sparse or ill-defined memories, deferred imitation research reveals that infants store and retrieve highly detailed memory representations. The specificity of detail encoded into the representation can, however, cause memory retrieval to fail at young ages. Developing the ability to identify event components which are central (the target stimulus) versus details which are peripheral (the exact context in which learning occurred) is therefore an important aspect of memory development. Using deferred imitation procedures to study the transition from constrained to flexible memory representations can thus facilitate our understanding of the development of declarative memory during the infancy period. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using deferred imitation to understand the process of change in infant memory development

In their commentaries, Carver, Richmond and DeBoer pose several challenging and insightful questions in response to our target article. Two key themes emerged from their commentaries, which are important in the field of infant memory research. The first concerns the use of deferred imitation as a paradigm, and its relationship to other methods of assessing infant cognition. The second concerns understanding the process of change observed in infant memory. How do maturation and experience interact to produce developmental change, and what theories can best account for changes in representational flexibility in early infancy? We will address each area and the implications these questions have for the direction of future research.

Retrieval Protracts Deferred Imitation by 6-Month-Olds.

Past research using a deferred imitation task has shown that 6-month-olds remember a 3-part action sequence for only 1 day. The concept of a time window suggests that there is a limited period within which additional information can be integrated with a prior memory. Its width tracks the forgetting function of the memory. This study asked if retrieving the memory of the modeled actions at the end of the time window protracts its retention, if the type of retrieval (active or passive) differentially influences retention, and if the retrieval delay influences its specificity. In Experiment 1, 6-month-olds either imitated the modeled actions (active retrieval group) or merely watched them modeled again (passive retrieval group) 1 day after the original demonstration. Both groups showed deferred imitation after 10 days. In Experiment 2, 6-month-olds who repeatedly retrieved the memory at or near the end of the time window deferred imitation for 2.5 months. In Experiment 3,6-month-olds spontaneously generalized imitation late in the time window after 1 prior retrieval, whether it was active or passive. These studies reveal that the retention benefit of multiple retrievals late in the time window is huge. Because most retrievals are undoubtedly latent, the contribution of repeated events to the growth of the knowledge base early in infancy has been greatly underestimated.

Deferred imitation of object-related actions in human-reared juvenile chimpanzees and orangutans.

Deferred imitation of object-related actions (e.g., picking up a cloth with a set of tongs) was assessed in 3 enculturated juvenile orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and 3 enculturated juvenile chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). For each task, animals were given 4 min to explore the objects (baseline), followed by a demonstration of the target behavior, and 10 min later, were re-presented the objects (deferred phase). Each animal displayed deferred imitation on at least one trial, with each species demonstrating deferred imitation on approximately half of all possible trials. The findings were interpreted as reflecting cognitive abilities in juvenile great apes that permit deferred imitation under humanlike rearing conditions.

Imitation of televised models by infants.

Studies indicate that infants in our culture are exposed to significant amounts of TV, often as a baby-sitting strategy by busy caretakers. The question arises whether TV viewing merely presents infants with a salient collection of moving patterns or whether they will readily pick up information depicted in this 2-D representation and incorporate it into their own behavior. Can infants "understand" the content of television enough to govern their real-world behavior accordingly? One way to explore this question is to present a model via television for infants to imitate. Infants' ability to imitate TV models was explored at 2 ages, 14 and 24 months, under conditions of immediate and deferred imitation. In deferred imitation, infants were exposed to a TV depiction of an adult manipulating a novel toy in a particular way but were not presented with the real toy until the next day. The results showed significant imitation at both ages, and furthermore showed that even the youngest group imitated after the 24-hour delay. The finding of deferred imitation of TV models has social and policy implications, because it suggests that TV viewing in the home could potentially affect infant behavior and development more than heretofore contemplated. The results also add to a growing body of literature on prelinguistic representational capacities. They do so in the dual sense of showing that infants can relate 2-D representations to their own actions on real objects in 3-D space, and moreover that the information picked up through TV can be internally represented over lengthy delays before it is used to guide the real-world action.