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Domestic dogs have been shown to copy their caregiver's actions, including ones which are causally-irrelevant to a physical goal—a behaviour called "overimitation". In a new overimitation task with a non-food reward, this study investigated "causal misunderstanding"—falsely assuming causally-irrelevant actions to have functional relevancy—as an explanation for dog overimitation (N = 81). By providing dogs with prior experience of the task to learn about the consequences of its irrelevant box-stepping and relevant bucket-opening action to obtain a toy-ball, we tested whether and when dogs would copy their caregiver's irrelevant-action demonstrations. Dogs with and without prior experience were compared to a third (control) group of dogs, who had neither prior experience nor caregiver demonstrations of the task. Results revealed that the timing of overimitation, rather than its frequency, was closely related to dogs' prior experience: dogs with prior experience attended to their reward first, then interacted with the irrelevant box later ("post-goal overimitation"), while dogs without prior experience first interacted with the irrelevant box ("pre-goal overimitation"). Our results suggest that, when action consequences are understood, dogs are overimitating for a secondary social goal that is clearly distinct from the task goal of obtaining a physical reward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Domestic dogs have been shown to copy their caregiver’s actions, including ones which are causally-irrelevant to a physical goal—a behaviour called “overimitation”. In a new overimitation task with a non-food reward, this study investigated “causal misunderstanding”—falsely assuming causally-irrelevant actions to have functional relevancy—as an explanation for dog overimitation (N = 81). By providing dogs with prior experience of the task to learn about the consequences of its irrelevant box-stepping and relevant bucket-opening action to obtain a toy-ball, we tested whether and when dogs would copy their caregiver’s irrelevant-action demonstrations. Dogs with and without prior experience were compared to a third (control) group of dogs, who had neither prior experience nor caregiver demonstrations of the task. Results revealed that the timing of overimitation, rather than its frequency, was closely related to dogs' prior experience: dogs with prior experience attended to their reward first, then interacted with the irrelevant box later (“post-goal overimitation”), while dogs without prior experience first interacted with the irrelevant box (“pre-goal overimitation”). Our results suggest that, when action consequences are understood, dogs are overimitating for a secondary social goal that is clearly distinct from the task goal of obtaining a physical reward.

Overimitation — the copying of another’s unnecessary or irrelevant actions toward a goal — is largely considered to be uniquely human. Recent studies, however, have found evidence of this behavior in dogs. Humans seem to overimitate more or less depending on social factors, such as the cultural origin of the demonstrator. Like humans, dogs may have social motivations behind their overimitation, since they have been shown to copy irrelevant actions more from their caregivers than from strangers. By using priming methodology, this study aimed to investigate whether dogs’ overimitation can be facilitated via the experimental manipulation of their attachment-based motivations. To test this, we invited caregivers to demonstrate goal-irrelevant and relevant actions to their dog, following either a dog-caregiver relationship prime, a dog-caregiver attention prime, or no prime. Our results showed no significant main effect of priming on copying behavior for either relevant or irrelevant actions, but we found a trend that unprimed dogs copied the least actions overall. Additionally, dogs copied their caregiver’s relevant actions more often and more faithfully as the number of trials increased. Our final finding was that dogs were much more likely to copy irrelevant actions after (rather than before) already achieving the goal. This study discusses the social motivations behind dog imitative behavior, and has potential methodological implications regarding the influence of priming on dog behavioral studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical findings and theorizations of both imitation and selective trust offer different views on and interpretations of children's social learning mechanisms. The imitation literature provides ample documentation of children's behavioural patterns in the acquisition of socially appropriate norms and practices. The selective trust literature provides insights into children's cognitive processes of choosing credible informants and what information to learn in future interactions. In this paper, we place together findings from both fields and note that they share analogically similar theoretical underpinnings and offer explanations that are complementary to each other. We contend that children's imitative tendency may be due to their selection of in‐group members as cultural experts, who serve as reliable sources of conventional information. Moving forward, we note the importance of evaluating individual differences and cultural factors to provide a more holistic understanding of universality and variation in children's social learning mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans anthropomorphize: as a result of our evolved ultrasociality, we see the world through personcolored glasses. In this review, I suggest that an interesting proportion of the extraordinary tool-using abilities shown by humans results from our mistakenly anthropomorphizing and forming social relationships with objects and devices. I introduce the term machination to describe this error, sketch an outline of the evidence for it, tie it to intrinsic reward for social interaction, and use it to help explain overimitation-- itself posited as underpinning human technological complexity--by human children and adults. I also suggest pathways for testing the concept's presence and limits, with an explicit focus on contextspecific individual and temporal variation. I posit cognitive pressure from time constraints or opaque mechanisms as a cause for machination, with rapid, subconscious attribution of goals or desires to tools reducing cognitive overload. Machination holds promise for understanding how we create and use combinatorial technology, for clarifying differences with nonhuman animal tool use, and for examining the human fascination with objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the role of ostensive cues in pedagogicalreasoning, we explored whether toddlers, like preschoolers,would copy causally implausible actions following apedagogical demonstration. Toddlers watched a demonstratorperform a two-action sequence (AB) on a puzzle-box that ledto a reward. We manipulated the demonstrator’s intentionalityand the causal plausibility of action A and examined how thesefactors influenced copying behavior. Although toddlers weremore likely to copy A when it was causally plausible, they werenot influenced by the demonstrator’s intentionality.Importantly, toddlers were no more likely to copy the ABsequence following a pedagogical demonstration vs. a non-communicative demonstration. Comparing behavioural data tocomputational model predictions for learners differing in theirsensitivity to intentionality and causal plausibility supported anabsence of pedagogical reasoning. These results suggest thatsensitivity to ostension may be a necessary prerequisite—butis not sufficient for—pedagogical reasoning in a causalimitation task.

In overimitation, an observer reproduces a model's visually causally redundant actions in pursuit of an object‐directed outcome. There remains an assumption that costs involved in adopting redundant actions renders them maladaptive in the immediate context. Here, we report on an experiment designed to evaluate whether or not overimitating is costly in this way. One hundred and eight children from two contrasting cultural groups (Australian Western vs. South African Bushman) observed an adult open an apparatus using a process that locked one side and opened another. Two toys were then inserted in the locked side and one in the open side. Copying the model meant access only to the lower quantity reward would be possible. This process was repeated for a second trial. Contrary to expectation, children retrieved similar numbers of toys regardless of whether they reproduced the model's actions or not, suggesting that in contexts like that presented here, overimitation is not costly in the ways commonly assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overimitation — the copying of another’s unnecessary or irrelevant actions toward a goal — is largely considered to be uniquely human. Recent studies, however, have found evidence of this behavior in dogs. Humans seem to overimitate more or less depending on social factors, such as the cultural origin of the demonstrator. Like humans, dogs may have social motivations behind their overimitation, since they have been shown to copy irrelevant actions more from their caregivers than from strangers. By using priming methodology, this study aimed to investigate whether dogs’ overimitation can be facilitated via the experimental manipulation of their attachment-based motivations. To test this, we invited caregivers to demonstrate goal-irrelevant and relevant actions to their dog, following either a dog-caregiver relationship prime, a dog-caregiver attention prime, or no prime. Our results showed no significant main effect of priming on copying behavior for either relevant or irrelevant actions, but we found a trend that unprimed dogs copied the least actions overall. Additionally, dogs copied their caregiver’s relevant actions more often and more faithfully as the number of trials increased. Our final finding was that dogs were much more likely to copy irrelevant actions after (rather than before) already achieving the goal. This study discusses the social motivations behind dog imitative behavior, and has potential methodological implications regarding the influence of priming on dog behavioral studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overimitation — the copying of another’s unnecessary or irrelevant actions toward a goal — is largely considered to be uniquely human. Recent studies, however, have found evidence of this behavior in dogs. Humans seem to overimitate more or less depending on social factors, such as the cultural origin of the demonstrator. Like humans, dogs may have social motivations behind their overimitation, since they have been shown to copy irrelevant actions more from their caregivers than from strangers. By using priming methodology, this study aimed to investigate whether dogs’ overimitation can be facilitated via the experimental manipulation of their attachment-based motivations. To test this, we invited caregivers to demonstrate goal-irrelevant and relevant actions to their dog, following either a dog-caregiver relationship prime, a dog-caregiver attention prime, or no prime. Our results showed no significant main effect of priming on copying behavior for either relevant or irrelevant actions, but we found a trend that unprimed dogs copied the least actions overall. Additionally, dogs copied their caregiver’s relevant actions more often and more faithfully as the number of trials increased. Our final finding was that dogs were much more likely to copy irrelevant actions after (rather than before) already achieving the goal. This study discusses the social motivations behind dog imitative behavior, and has potential methodological implications regarding the influence of priming on dog behavioral studies.

This document is a corrigendum for an article titled "Socially priming dogs in an overimitation task" published in Frontiers in Psychology. The corrigendum addresses an error in the caption for Figure 4, where "relevant-action copying" was mistakenly written instead of "irrelevant-action copying" and "< 0.05" instead of "> 0.05". The authors apologize for the error and clarify that it does not affect the scientific conclusions of the article. The original article has been updated. [Extracted from the article]

• Overimitation refers to copying observed actions, even causally unnecessary ones. Here, we hypothesized that learning from a peer decreases this tendency. • We investigated whether (1) children would overimitate more adults than peers, and whether (2) pedagogy (Montessori vs. traditional) would impact overimitation rate of students. • We report that students' overimitation rate is lower after watching a peer than an adult, replicating past studies. • However, Montessori-schooled students have a lower propensity to overimitate adults than traditionally-schooled students. Children are strong imitators, which sometimes leads to overimitation of causally unnecessary actions. Here, we tested whether learning from a peer decreases this tendency. First, 65 7- to 10-year-old children performed the Hook task (i.e., retrieve a reward from a jar with tools) with child or adult demonstrators. The overimitation rate was lower after watching a peer versus an adult. Second, we tested whether experiencing peer-to-peer learning versus adult-driven learning (i.e., Montessori or traditional pedagogy) affected overimitation. Here, 66 4- to 18-year-old children and adolescents performed the Hook task with adult demonstrators only. Montessori-schooled children had a lower propensity to overimitate. These findings emphasize the importance of the teaching model across the school years. Whereas peer models favor selective imitation, adult models encourage overimitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children ‘overimitate’ causally irrelevant actions in experiments where both irrelevant and relevant actions involve a single common tool. This study design may make it harder for children to recognize the irrelevant actions, as the perceived functionality of the tool during the demonstration of the relevant action may be carried over to the irrelevant action, potentially increasing overimitation. Moreover, little is known how overimitation is affected by the demonstrator's expressed emotions and the child's prior success with the task. Here, 131 nine- to ten-year-old French and German children first engaged in a tool-based task, being successful or unsuccessful, and then watched an adult demonstrating the solution involving one irrelevant and one relevant action before smiling or remaining neutral. These actions were performed with the same tool or with two separate tools, testing potential carry-over effects of the functionality of the relevant action on the irrelevant action. We show that overimitation was higher when the same tool was used for both actions and when children were previously unsuccessful, but was not affected by the demonstrator's displayed emotion. Our results suggest that future overimitation research should account for the number of tools used in a demonstration and participants' previous task experience.

Overimitation is imitating relevant and irrelevant actions to achieve a final goal (Lyons et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007, 104(50), 19751–19756). We investigated whether the order of demonstration (the irrelevant action is demonstrated before or after the final goal) induces overimitation when using explicit instruction (saying the instrumental goal). We employed a between‐subjects design with 48 five‐year‐olds. In the before condition, the irrelevant action towards the sub‐apparatus was performed, followed by the action relevant to the final goal with the main apparatus. In the after condition, the experimenter performed the irrelevant action after the final goal. Results indicated that overimitation occurred when irrelevant actions were demonstrated after the goal using explicit instruction. This may mean that children's overimitation is affected by goal demotion, which is created through the order of demonstration of the irrelevant actions. This highlights how goal demotion affects children's overimitation and clarifies how children perceive intentionality in the action sequence, including irrelevant actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overimitation, the copying of causally irrelevant or non-functional actions, is well-known from humans but completely absent in other primates. Recent studies from our lab have provided evidence for overimitation in canines. Previously, we found that half of tested pet dogs copied their human caregiver’s irrelevant action, while only few did so when the action was demonstrated by an unfamiliar experimenter. Therefore, we hypothesized that dogs show overimitation as a result of socio-motivational grounds. To test this more specifically, here we investigated how the relationship with the caregiver influenced the eagerness to overimitate. Given the high variability in the tendency to overimitate their caregiver, we hypothesized that not only familiarity but also relationship quality influences whether dogs faithfully copy their caregiver. For this purpose, on the one hand we measured the overimitation tendency (with the same test as in the two studies before) and on the other hand the relationship quality between the dogs and their caregivers. Although we found no significant correlation between the two test results, our data might suggest that, on average, dogs who overimitated seemed to show more referential and affiliative behaviours towards the owner than dogs who showed less or no copying of the irrelevant action. Notably, as a group, those dogs that showed the highest level of copying accuracy of the irrelevant action showed the highest level of gazing and synchronization towards the owner.

Across the lifespan and across populations, humans 'overimitate' causally unnecessary behaviors. Such irrelevant‐action imitation facilitates faithful cultural transmission, but its immediate benefits to the imitator are controversial. Over short time scales, irrelevant‐action imitation may bootstrap artifact exploration or interpersonal affiliation, and over longer time scales it may facilitate acquisition of either causal models or social conventions. To investigate these putative functions, we recruited community samples from two under‐studied populations: Yasawa, Fiji, and Huatasani, Peru. We use a two‐action puzzle box: first after a video demonstration, and again one month later. Treating age as a continuous variable, we reveal divergent developmental trajectories across sites. Yasawans (44 adults, M = 39.9 years, 23 women; 42 children, M = 9.8 years, 26 girls) resemble documented patterns, with irrelevant‐action imitation increasing across childhood and plateauing in adulthood. In contrast, Huatasaneños (48 adults, M = 37.6 years, 33 women; 47 children, M = 9.3 years, 13 girls) evince a parabolic trajectory: adults at the site show the lowest irrelevant‐action imitation of any demographic set in our sample. In addition, all age sets in both populations reduce their irrelevant actions at Time 2, but do not reduce their relevant‐action imitation or goal attainment. Taken together, and considering the local cultural contexts, our results suggest that irrelevant‐action imitation serves a short‐term function and is sensitive to the social context of the demonstration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dogs have not only shown different kinds of social learning, from either conspecifics or humans, including do-as-I-do imitation, deferred imitation, and selective imitation, but in two previous studies they have also shown an eagerness to copy causally irrelevant actions. This so-called overimitation is prevalent in humans but is totally absent in great apes. Whereas in one of two previous studies dogs copied actions from an experimenter (Johnston, Holden, & Santos in Developmental Science, 20, e12460, 2017), in the other a reasonable number of the dogs copied the irrelevant actions from their human caregiver (Huber, Popovová, Riener, Salobir, & Cimarelli in Learning & Behavior, 46, 387–397, 2018). Dogs have not only been domesticated to live and work with us, but many companion dogs develop strong affiliative relationships with their caregiver, which are akin to the attachment bonds between human children and their mother. We therefore assumed that overimitation in dogs might be strongly motivated by social factors, such as affiliation or conformity. To test this hypothesis, we confronted dogs with the same demonstration of causally relevant and irrelevant actions as in the previous study (Huber et al. in Learning & Behavior, 46, 387–397, 2018), but this time with an unfamiliar experimenter instead of the caregiver as the demonstrator. The results strongly supported our hypothesis: Whereas half of the subjects in the previous study replicated the causally irrelevant action demonstrated by their caregiver, only very few did so when the actions were demonstrated by the experimenter. We conclude that the eagerness of dogs to learn from humans and to copy even unnecessary actions is strongly facilitated by their relationship with the particular human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our proclivity toward high-fidelity transmission of knowledge is one of the key mechanisms that underpins our success as a species. This study evaluated overimitation within children with hearing impairments (who had either a cochlear implant or a hearing aid) in relation to those with normal hearing. A total of seventy-two 4-year-old children were shown how to operate novel objects using a series of causally irrelevant actions, followed by causally relevant action. We measured the degree to which children reproduced the irrelevant actions as an indicator of imitative fidelity. Children with either hearing impairments or normal hearing replicated the irrelevant actions at rates above the baseline. However, imitative fidelity of the former group was significantly lower. In addition, children with hearing impairments were also less likely to identify and achieve the outcome by performing the relevant act. This study advances our understanding of social learning in children with hearing impairments and proposes potential weakness of social-cognitive skills within this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a young age, children in Western, industrialized societies overimitate others' actions. However, the underlying motivation and cultural specificity of this behavior have remained unclear. Here, 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 125) from two rural Namibian populations (Hai||om and Ovambo) and one urban German population were tested in two versions of an overimitation paradigm. Across cultures, children selectively imitated more actions when the adult model was present compared to being absent, denoting a social motivation underlying overimitation. At the same time, children's imitation was not linked to their tendency to reengage the adult in a second, independent measure of social motivation. These results suggest that, across diverse cultures, children's imitative behavior is actuated by the attentive state of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children overimitated a model regardless of self-reported competence information. • Information given by third parties also did not influence overimitation frequencies. • The results confirm the robustness of overimitation shown in previous studies. • The study shows the first data about overimitation from a South American country. Overimitation is defined by a tendency to copy all actions executed by a model, even the clearly irrelevant ones. The motivational mechanisms and functionality of overimitation are still not well understood, but its possible adaptive meaning could be related to causal opacity of a great part of socially learned behaviors. This phenomenon has been widely replicated in several contexts and has been observed in the behavior of children over 2 years of age and even in adults. Despite the seeming robustness of overimitation, studies have shown that it is sensitive to some characteristics of a model observed such as age, familiarity, proficiency, and reputation. Our work intended to investigate the effect of information about the competence of an adult model on the copying of irrelevant actions by preschool children (5 years old) in a task. We tested the influence of self-declared information about the model competence and of the same kind of information given by third parties in a conversation about the model. Our results reveal no effect of both "self-declared competence" and "reputation" biases on overimitation. We discuss that this result may have occurred because other information available to participants, and not manipulated by us, was used to infer model competence such as the model's age and success in the task directly observed by the participants. Another potential explanation is that children use a "copy all, correct later" strategy in a context where only one model is available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We investigated the development of imitation in 18-, 24- and 36-month-olds. • We presented participants with a rational-imitation task, and measured gaze behavior. • All three age groups imitated faithfully, displaying an increasing imitation rate. • This is caused by a change in the function of imitation from instrumental to social. • The increase in social motive might be the foundation of human culture. Cultural learning plays a crucial role in enabling children to fit into their social community by mastering culture-specific habits. Infants learn actions via imitation, and they seem to be sensitive to the context in which a model demonstrates these. They imitate rationally by copying unusual means to achieve a goal more when the model chooses this means voluntarily compared with when some constraints force the model to do so. We investigated the development of rational imitation. In a within-participants design, 18-, 24-, and 36-month-olds (N = 293) observed two unusual actions: Instead of using her hands, a model operated an apparatus by using her head or by sitting on the apparatus. The model did so once with her hands being occupied and once with her hands being free. Besides measuring participants' imitative responses, we analyzed the gaze behavior directed at the model during the response phase of the current study and of 14-month-olds (N = 82) from Gellén and Buttelmann's study (Child Development Research, Vol. 2017, art. 8080649 [2017]). Increasing age was accompanied by an increasing rate of overall imitation across conditions. None of the three older age groups selectively imitated the unusual actions significantly more often in the hands-free condition than in the hands-occupied condition. Thus, rational imitation seems to disappear during the second year of life. Furthermore, there was a significant increase between 14 and 24 months of age and beyond in children's tendency to gaze at the model after reenacting the observed action. Children's gaze behavior indicates that this pattern might be due to a growing underlying social component in early cultural learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • This study tests the impact of audience and object novelty on overimitation. • Children completed an overimitation task on matched novel and familiar objects. • The demonstrator watched, turned away, or left the room during the response period. • Actions on novel objects were imitated more than actions on familiar objects. • Children reduced their imitation when the demonstrator turned away. Abstract This study tested whether overimitation is subject to an audience effect, and whether it is modulated by object novelty. A sample of 86 4- to 11-year-old children watched a demonstrator open novel and familiar boxes using sequences of necessary and unnecessary actions. The experimenter then observed the children, turned away, or left the room while the children opened the box. Children copied unnecessary actions more when the experimenter watched or when she left, but they copied less when she turned away. This parallels infant studies suggesting that turning away is interpreted as a signal of disengagement. Children displayed increased overimitation and reduced efficiency discrimination when opening novel boxes compared with familiar boxes. These data provide important evidence that object novelty is a critical component of overimitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cumulative culture, where innovations are incorporated progressively into a population's stock of skills and knowledge, generating more sophisticated repertoires, is a core aspect of human cognition underpinning the technological advances that characterize our species. Cumulative culture relies on our proclivity for high‐fidelity imitation, a characteristic that emerged phylogenetically early in our evolutionary history and emerges ontogenetically early in our development. Commensurate with this proclivity to copy others comes a tradeoff that behaviors that are functionally irrelevant will be easily maintained and transmitted. Rituals are an expression of this. In this article, I argue that the core cognitive architecture responsible for cumulative culture and technological progress also supports the propagation of rituals: our socially motivated propensity for engaging in high‐fidelity imitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companion dogs learn easily from humans, including human behavior, human communication, and some aspects of the human-made environment. They benefit from having the opportunity to learn from humans and are able to spontaneously synchronize their behavior with that of their caregiver. Here, we tested whether pet dogs would show a special form of observational learning, one that has been considered uniquely human. Indeed, humans show overimitation, the faithful copying of causally irrelevant actions, but great apes do not. Because in humans this peculiar form of imitation is strongly motivated by social factors, such as affiliation or conformity, we hypothesized that domesticated and enculturated dogs are more likely than apes are to copy such actions, especially if shown by their affiliated caregiver. Indeed, half of the dogs replicated a causally irrelevant action that was demonstrated by their caregiver, and about the same number did this whether they saw only this action being demonstrated or being demonstrated before or after a causally relevant, functional action. The demonstration of a causally relevant action, one that is immediately followed by access to food, thus does not inhibit the copying of an action that is spatially separated and functionally opaque. Given that the copying frequency in this study was low overall, these results suggest evidence for overimitation in dogs, which might challenge the human uniqueness of this type of social learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imitation is a powerful and ubiquitous social learning strategy, fundamental for the development of individual skills and cultural traditions. Recent research on the cognitive foundations and development of imitation, though, presents a surprising picture: Although even infants imitate in selective, efficient, and rational ways, children and adults engage in overimitation. Rather than imitating selectively and efficiently, they sometimes faithfully reproduce causally irrelevant actions as much as relevant ones. In this article, we suggest a new perspective on this phenomenon by integrating established findings on children’s more general capacities for rational action parsing with newer findings on overimitation. We suggest that overimitation is a consequence of children’s growing capacities to understand causal and social constraints in relation to goals and that it rests on the human capacity to represent observed actions simultaneously on different levels of goal hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The binomy between psychology and school brings to mind, almost immediately, at least three different inflections on how these two terms might be linked to each other. The first, and most immediate, is the close relationship between psychologic research and test subjects availability, offered spontaneously by the scholastic institutions. The second one, refers to the contribution that the dialogue between pedagogy and psychology can offer to the formations of teachers, of any order, and their operativity, to be applied in regards of their students. And finally a fruitful dialogue implies that the school is able to offer interrogatives, themes for analysis and support in regards to the new issues that the school itself needs to face. In light of this "dialogue", in this article the authors aim to present some ideas concerning the recent mechanisms of learning that might be transmitted to teachers during their formation and inspire them during their daily pedagogic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are skilful at acquiring tool-using skills by faithfully copying relevant and irrelevant actions performed by others, but poor at innovating tools to solve problems. Five- to twelve-year-old urban French and rural Serbian children (N = 208) were exposed to a Hook task; a jar containing a reward in a bucket and a pipe cleaner as potential recovering tool material. In both countries, few children under the age of 10 made a hook from the pipe cleaner to retrieve the reward on their own. However, from five onward, the majority of unsuccessful children succeeded after seeing an adult model manufacturing a hook without completing the task. Additionally, a third of the children who observed a similar demonstration including an irrelevant action performed with a second object, a string, replicated this meaningless action. Children's difficulty with innovation and early capacity for overimitation thus do not depend on socio-economic background. Strikingly, we document a sex difference in overimitation across cultures, with boys engaging more in overimitation than girls, a finding that may result from differences regarding explorative tool-related behaviour. This male-biased sex effect sheds new light on our understanding of overimitation, and more generally, on how human tool culture evolved.

The current target article provides a robust investigation of the "cultural character" of cognitive development. This investigation has both theoretical and empirical/methodological aspects. Methodologically, the authors argue for a unit of analysis concerning the development of object knowledge that includes other agents engaged in communication with the infant (i.e., that includes the sociocultural aspects of the infants' developmental environment). We agree with such a position and further illustrate its utility in our own analysis of the phenomenon of overimitation. With respect to the underlying theory, we agree with the arguments against strictly cognitivist frameworks (including those with a more recent "embodied" flavor), as well as the fundamental importance ascribed to sociality and culture. However, for some aspects of the pragmatics of the object paradigm we would suggest narrowing the scope about the necessity of culture for development while in other respects we would like to suggest possible elaborations or extensions. Perhaps most fundamentally, we suggest that the physical versus cultural split that frames the target article discussion is not as metaphysically fundamental as seems to be presupposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overimitation is defined as the imitation of a series of actions, including causally irrelevant ones. Although previous studies have indicated that children’s overimitation tends to be flexible, there is no research directly comparing overimitation occurrences due to types of irrelevant actions such as the target of irrelevant action or tool use. To identify the boundary of overimitation—that is, the point at which it occurs or not—Study 1 focused on the target of causally irrelevant tool-using actions. Specifically, the study examined the demonstration of irrelevant actions toward a main apparatus, a disconnected apparatus, or an actor’s own body, followed by the demonstration of causally relevant actions, to 2-, 3-, and 5-year-old children ( N = 59). Results indicated that children overimitated actions toward the apparatuses more than they did the actions toward an actor’s body. These results showed that overimitation was affected by the target, the apparatus, or the actor’s own body. Study 2 investigated the effect of tool use toward the disconnected apparatus or an actor’s body based on the findings in Study 1. Concretely, Study 2 added two actions without tool use (e.g., action toward an actor’s own body without tool use and action toward an apparatus without tool use) to Study 1’s actions for comparison. The results of this study showed that children overimitated the action toward the apparatus and the action with the tool more than the action toward an actor’s own body and the action without the tool. Taken together, these findings suggest that two factors are involved in the occurrence of overimitation: the target of the action (i.e., the apparatus) and the use of a tool. The current findings provide suggestions for considering important aspects of overimitation that are worthy of more attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When imitating novel actions, typically developing preschoolers often copy components of the demonstration that are unrelated to the modeled action's goal, a phenomenon known as 'overimitation'. According to the social motivation account, overimitation fulfills social affiliation motives (i.e., the imitator's drive to experience social connectedness with the demonstrator and the social context). Conversely, according to the social-cognitive account, overimitation reflects overattribution of causal relevance (i.e., the imitator's failure to appreciate that some components of the demonstration are not relevant to the action's outcome). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and William syndrome (WS) are characterized by reduced and enhanced spontaneous social motivation, respectively, as well as similar impairments in social-cognition, thus providing helpful test cases to understand the nature of overimitation. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we examined overimitation in 31 preschoolers with ASD, 18 age- and IQ-matched peers with WS, and 19 age-matched typically developing children. We found that children with WS and typically developing children were more likely to overimitate, and to increase their attention to the model's face during demonstration of causally irrelevant actions, compared to those with ASD. These findings will be discussed in the context of support for the social-motivational account of overimitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two social learning strategies that develop rapidly during the preschool period are selective trust and overimitation. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared performance on these two abilities. In line with previous research, we hypothesized that these abilities would be associated, but that this association would decrease with age; that selective trust would be related to theory of mind; and that overimitation would be related to social affiliation. We first administered a selective trust task and an overimitation task with puppets via video-chat to a sample of 3.5- and 5-year-old children (n = 80). Results did not support our hypotheses. As the overimitation rate was low, we conducted a second experiment using the same procedures, but with human agents (n = 72). Results showed an association between selective trust and theory of mind, and a significant increase of overimitation with the human demonstrator, suggesting that overimitation might be related to social affiliation. • Preschoolers' performance on selective trust and overimitation tasks was unrelated. • Selective trust was associated with theory of mind skills with human informants. • There was no link between overimitation and parent-reported social affiliation. • Children overimitated more a human than a puppet model [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overimitation—copying incorrect, idiosyncratic, or causally irrelevant actions—has been linked to our species’ long history with artifacts whose functions are often opaque. It is an open question, however, whether children overimitate outside the artifact domain. We explored this question by presenting preschool-age children (3- to 5-year-olds, N = 120) with an elicited imitation task that included high- and low-frequency disyllabic nouns (e.g., ‘pizza) and nonwords (e.g., ‘chizza), all of which had a stressed first syllable. However, during testing, half of the stimuli were incorrectly pronounced by stressing the second syllable (e.g., pi’zza). More than half of the children copied the model’s incorrect pronunciation of high-frequency familiar words, consistent with overimitation. This pattern of response persisted even after children had themselves correctly named the familiar words prior to the start of testing, confirming that children purposefully altered the pronunciation of known words to match the incorrect pronunciations used by a model. These results demonstrate that overimitation is not restricted to the artifact domain and might extend to many different tasks and domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency for children to overimitate and conform to unanimous majorities is pervasive. Here we tested whether social factors are powerful enough to lead children to overcome this tendency and contrast their behavior to that of others. In one condition, children were shown a video of three out-group members performing the same action on a novel toy. In this condition, 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, were significantly more likely to produce the contrasting action than the action demonstrated by the group. On the other hand, children who saw the same actions performed by neutral individuals typically matched their actions to those of the group regardless of their age. By demonstrating that 5-year-olds actively contrast their behavior to that of out-group members, these results provide an important comparison with previous research on imitation and conformity and demonstrate the profound influence that social motivations exert over children’s copying behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imitation and innovation work in tandem to support cultural learning in children and facilitate our capacity for cumulative culture. Here we propose an integrated theoretical account of how the unique demands of acquiring instrumental skills and cultural conventions provide insight into when children imitate, when they innovate, and to what degree. For instrumental learning, with an increase in experience, high fidelity imitation decreases and innovation increases. By contrast, for conventional learning, imitative fidelity stays high, regardless of experience, and innovation stays low. We synthesize cutting edge research on the development of imitative flexibility and innovation to provide insight into the social learning mechanisms underpinning the uniquely human mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 7 million years or so since humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees we have colonized more of the planet's terrestrial habitat than any other mammalian species and come to account for more biomass than all other terrestrial vertebrates combined. Chimpanzees, in contrast to and under pressure from ourselves, have veered toward extinction. There are multiple reasons for the stark evolutionary trajectories humans and chimpanzees have taken. Recent theoretical and empirical interest has focused on the emergence of cumulative culture whereby technological innovations are progressively incorporated into a population's stock of skills and knowledge, generating ever more sophisticated repertoires. Here we look at the role of high-fidelity imitation and intention-reading in the establishment of cumulative culture. By focusing on the lithic record, we aim to identify when in our evolutionary history these skills became part of our ancestors' behavioral repertoire. We argue that evidence of cooperative construction in stone tool manufacture, along with speculation regarding changes to the mirror neurone system, hint at the foundations of overimitation and shared intentionality around 2 million years ago. However, these are not the only ingredients of cumulative culture, which is why we do not see convincing evidence for it until slightly more than a million years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imitative behavior is known to be affected in Autism Spectrum Conditions. This issue has been addressed with a wide range of tasks and from many different perspectives. Here we use a version of Hamilton, Brindley, and Frith's (2007) bar-task in a sample of individuals with ASC and matched controls, to assess spontaneous imitation of goal-oriented actions. Contrary to previous studies which relied on ambiguous instructions to explore the spontaneous tendency to copy inefficient action patterns (Jiménez, Lorda, & Méndez, 2014), we used explicit instructions centered on the material outcome, in order to reduce the social motivation to overimitate. Consistently with previous findings, results showed that individuals with ASC and their matched counterparts were equally guided by action planning, but that the former exhibit a smaller tendency to mimic the less functional actions displayed by the model. These results are discussed as showing that these mimicry deficits cannot be accounted exclusively in terms of STORM (i.e., Social, Top-down Response Modulation) effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past 20 years or so, the psychological research on imitation has flourished. However, our working definition of imitation has not adequately adapted in order to reflect this research. The closest that we've come to a revamped conception of imitation comes from the work of Michael Tomasello. Despite its numerous virtues, Tomasello's definition is in need of at least two significant amendments, if it is to reflect the current state of knowledge. Accordingly, it is our goal in this paper to reformulate Tomasello's definition of imitation in order to account for both the latest empirical findings and the conceptual considerations that follow from them. Specifically, we argue that a satisfactory definition of imitation ought to be formulated as follows: imitation is the reproduction of an observed behavior where the agent imitating (1) recognizes the behavior of the demonstrator as goal-directed and (2) has some particular interest in or concern for replicating the precise technique performed by the author of the observed action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]