Poster #201 - The Effect of the Functional Action on Children’s Overimitation

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Children faithfully imitate all demonstrated actions, including those irrelevant and relevant to the final goal, which is called as overimitation (Horner & Nielsen, 2015). However, the types of irrelevant actions might affect the occurrence of overimitation in children. Children overimitated the irrelevant actions toward objects more than those towards actors (Taniguchi & Sanefuji, 2017). Furthermore, the actions toward the objects can be classified into two action types based on the object’s function. The first type is functional action, which relies on the object’s distinctive properties; for example, pushing the button. The second type is arbitrary action, which can be performed in case of any object function; for example, moving the button forward. Although previous studies on overimitation presented these types of irrelevant actions (Nielsen, Mushin, Tomaselli, & Whiten, 2014; Vivanti, Fanning, & Dissanayake, 2017), they did not compare the occurrence of children’s overimitation depending on the types of irrelevant actions, functional or arbitrary. Given the relevance to the final goal, children may overimitate the functional action more than the arbitrary action. Taniguchi and Sanefuji (2017) reported that children tend to overimitate the irrelevant actions that have a point in common with the final goal in terms of the target and the tool-using such as the action toward the target which is same as final goal by using tool . As the functional irrelevant action and the final goal are common in that both actions are related to the same object, children may tend to overimitate the functional action. Thus, the present study investigated whether children overimitate functional irrelevant actions or arbitrary irrelevant actions more.
Methods: The present study recruited 55 five-year-old children. They were allocated to functional or arbitrary conditions. All children witnessed the experimenter conduct the action sequence including the relevant and irrelevant actions . Depending on the condition, the irrelevant action was functional or arbitrary. Then, the experimenter placed the apparatus in front of child, observed the child’s response, and changed the apparatus. The same sequence with another apparatus was repeated four more times; five trials were conducted in total. Children were scored 1 when they imitated the irrelevant action; the score range was 0-5.
Results and Discussion:Results revealed that children overimitated the functional irrelevant action more than the arbitrary irrelevant action (t (53) = 8.43, p < .001, Figure 1). The result shows that children tend to overimitate the irrelevant action having a point in common with the final goal.Children think that there is a declarative norm that the demonstrated all actions consisting of irrelevant and relevant actions should be conducted and overimitate to acquire the norm (Kenward, Karlsson, & Persson, 2010). Given the present result, children tend to conceive the functional irrelevant action, which means the irrelevant action having a point in common with the final goal, as a part of the normative action sequence.

Authors

• Yuuki Taniguchi, Kyushu University
  Presenting Author

• Wakako Sanefuji, Kyushu university
  Non-Presenting Author