3-206 - Cultural Transmission and Over-imitation in Non-WEIRD Societies

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Over-imitation, the tendency of children to copy others so intensely that they incorporate visibly, causally-unnecessary elements, was identified only recently in developmental psychology. Since over-imitation was named in 2007 it has generated numerous studies and much debate about its functional significance, although there is general agreement that it underscores the potency of childhood cultural learning in our species.

However, like much of contemporary psychological research, these studies have focused on narrow samples of children from ‘WEIRD’ (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies. It has been suggested that over-imitation may be a function of special characteristics of these. This symposium builds on the first attempts to test children from very different societies (Nielsen and Tomaselli 2010). We extend the range to include hunter gatherers and horticulturalists in the Congo (Berl et al.), Fijians and Peruvians (Kline et al.), indigenous Australians (Nielsen at al.), and Melanesian islanders (Clegg and Legare), in the latter two cases directly compared with Westerners. Over-imitation has been investigated in both instrumental (e.g. open a puzzle box) and normative (e.g. ‘this is the ritual we follow’) contexts.

Evidence of over-imitation was found in all communities and at similar levels in most cross-cultural comparisons, with the striking exception of its rarity in the Aka hunter-gatherer child sample. However, each study also identified cross-cultural differences in the context of over-imitation (e.g. instrumental versus normative) or associated behaviours (e.g. cooperation). Together these studies extend the range and variety of childhood cultures examined and cast light on several important aspects of over-imitation.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Andrew Whiten, University of St. Andrews

Individual Presentations

• Cultural Variation in the Use of Overimitation by the Aka and Ngandu of the Congo Basin - Presenting Author: Richard EW Berl, Washington State University; Barry Hewlett, Washington State University Vancouver

• Population Differences in the Ontogeny of Overimitation in Peru and Fiji - Presenting Author: Michelle Ann Kline, Arizona State Univ; Eva Padilla, University of California, Santa Barbara; Matthew Gervais, University of California Santa Barbara; Cristina Moya, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Eric Fuerstenberg, University of California Santa Barbara; Becky Wright, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara; Robert Boyd, Arizona State University

• The Imitative, Over-imitative and Cooperative Behavior of Western and Indigenous Australian Pre-school Children - Presenting Author: Mark Gregory Nielsen, University of Queensland; Keyan Tomaselli, Unversity of KwaZulu-Natal; Ilana Mushin, University of Queensland; Andrew Whiten, University of St. Andrews

• Expectations for Conformity: A Cross-cultural Examination of “Overimitation” in a Western and a Non-Western Population - Presenting Author: Jennifer Marie Clegg, University of Texas at Austin; Cristine H. Legare, University of Texas at Austin