Imitation and imitation recognition: Functional use in preverbal infants and nonverbal children with autism

Abstract

Introduction Two options in developmental studies: search for precursors or search for adaptive behaviors Early imitation is currently a major topic for developmentalists. They investigate its developmental role and elaborate models concerning the processes through which imitation may serve as a determinant building block for later cognitive and social development. Piaget (1945) consecrated this tradition, focusing on deferred imitation as a predictor of representational capacities. Recently, Meltzoff and Gopnik (1993) proposed the fascinating hypothesis that early imitation provides the means to elaborate human properties which will lead to a theory of the human mind. They see imitation as a machine to extract similarities, a like-me mechanism through which a neonate is supposed to draw equivalences between what she sees and what she does and vice versa, thus forming the concept of like-me entities . While the predictive power of emerging imitative capacities is emphasized, and the cascading effect of their development is modeled, little attention is given to the functional use of these capacities by the developing child, in her everyday life. This information is crucial because the functional use of a behavior informs us about main developmental pathways, and especially about how the infant builds herself. Moreover, changes in functional use and transitory functional use of behaviors stress the nonlinear aspect of epigenesis, the flexibility of brain development and may be of help to understand the link between early behaviors of modern infants and ancestral behaviors of the human species in an evolutionary perspective.

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