Learning to Imitate in Infancy

Abstract

Theories of imitation learning are examined regarding their account of how the infant acquires the ability to emit a response which resembles a response previously exhibited by another. Each theory suffers from 1 or more of the following problems: logical inconsistency, incompleteness, and lack of empirical support. 3 of the views (associative thesis, discriminative learning thesis, and acquired value of the relational stimulus of similarity) are not mutually exclusive, and, therefore, they could be included in a theory of learning to imitate. However, none of these learning theses deals with the fact that imitation requires the infant to consistently abstract similar features from stimuli which differ on various dimensions. Hence, consideration is given to the role of cognition in a theory of learning to imitate.

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