To copy or not to copy: A comparison of selective trust and overimitation in young children.

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]