Infants' imitation of goal-directed actions: the role of movements and action effects.

Full Abstract

This paper reviews studies on infants' imitation of goal-directed actions in the first two years of life. Special emphasis is given to the role of the two observable components of an action, that is, the movement and the action effects, on infants' replication of target actions. The reviewed studies provide evidence that infants benefit most from a full demonstration of both movements and effects. If movements are demonstrated in isolation, infants may encode this information, but they preferentially reproduce actions that lead to salient effects. If action effects are presented in isolation, infants younger than 19 months usually fail to emulate the unseen movements that would be necessary to produce these effects. Infants' ability to predict action effects or to infer unseen movements from incomplete demonstrations improves substantially at the end of the second year of life. It is concluded that the capability to learn relations between movements and action effects by observation, and the knowledge about movement-effect relations acquired so far, may be important factors underlying the developmental changes in infants' imitation of goal-directed actions.

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Author information

Author/s: Elsner, Birgit (B);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Hauptstrasse 47-51, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany. elsner(-atsign-)psychologie.uni-heidelberg.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: Acta psychologica (Acta Psychol (Amst)), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jan; vol 124 (issue 1) : pp 44-59

Dates: Created 2006/12/25; Completed 2007/03/09;

PMID: 17078915, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Goals
Humans
Imitative Behavior - physiology
Infant

Infant Behavior - psychology
Motor Activity - physiology
Movement - physiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology

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