Poster #187 - Children Tend to Overimitate the Goal-Demoted Action

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Overimitation refers to reproducing a model’s irrelevant and relevant actions toward a final goal (Horner & Whiten, 2005). Overimitation is used to observe children’s preparedness to adopt ritualized behaviors (Nielsen, Tomaselli, & Katapitány, 2018). Nielsen, Kapitány, and Elkins (2015) investigated whether children’s overimitation is affected by the goal demotion. Goal demotion is the lack of causal nexus between the actions performed and any purported goal (Nielbo & Sørensen, 2011), which makes the observer blind to why the actor performs those actions. In Nielsen et al. (2015), children were allocated to one of two conditions, where the irrelevant action is demonstrated before the relevant action is conducted (before-condition) or after the relevant action is conducted (after-condition). After-condition features goal demotion because it is unclear why the experimenter performs another action after the final goal is achieved. The result showed that children’s overimitation occurs similarly across conditions. However, this may result from the instruction. In Nielsen et al. (2015), the experimenter asked participants to act freely (“Now, it’s your turn.”). This instruction leads children to be uncertain about the task’s goal and think that the irrelevant actions demonstrated by the model are meaningful and should be conducted (Flynn & Smith, 2012). Thus, this instruction may lead to children’s overimitation occurring similarly across conditions regardless of absence or presence of goal demotion. Hence, it is unclear whether goal demotion affects children’s overimitation when the task goal is apparent. The present study changed the instruction to one that helps to easily understand the task goal such as “retrieve the object” and aimed to investigate whether the goal demotion affects children’s overimitation.
Methods:We recruited 48 five year-old children. Children were allocated to before- or after-condition as in Nielsen et al. (2015). The experimenter showed all children the action sequence including the irrelevant and the relevant actions. Depending on the conditions, the timing of demonstrating irrelevant action was changed. After the demonstration, the experimenter presented the apparatus to children and instructed this: “Please retrieve the object from the box” and observed children’s performances. This trial was conducted thrice additionally with different apparatuses. The overimitation coding assessed whether the child performed the irrelevant action; thus, the score range was 0-4 in each condition because four trials were conducted in total.
Results and Discussion:Results revealed that children in the after-condition overimitated more than those in the before-condition (t (46) = 2.01, p < .001, Figure 1). The result showed that goal demotion is generated in the after-condition and affects children’s overimitation. Herrmann, Legare, Harris, and Whitehouse (2013) suggested that children overimitate when they interpret the irrelevant action as the conventional activity. Considering the present result, goal-demoted actions are interpreted as the conventional action and trigger children’s overimitation. Goal demotion plays an important role in children’s overimitation when children are certain about the task’s goal.

Authors

• Yuuki Taniguchi, Kyushu University
  Presenting Author

• Wakako Sanefuji, Kyushu university
  Non-Presenting Author