Imitative learning from a third-party interaction: Relations with self-recognition and perspective taking

Abstract

Young children’s ability to learn something new from a third-party interaction may be related to the ability to imagine themselves in the third-party interaction. This imaginative ability presupposes an understanding of self–other equivalence, which is manifested in an objective understanding of the self and an understanding of others’ subjective perspectives. The current study measured imitative learning of a novel action seen only in a third-party interaction, mirror self-recognition, and perspective taking in a group of 48 18- to 20-month-olds. Patterns of performance suggest that understanding self–other equivalence is related to third-party learning.

Introduction

Although there are numerous empirical studies of young children’s imitation of new behaviors from adults with whom they are engaged, little is known about whether toddlers can imitate novel behaviors of adults who are not interacting with them. When engaged in interaction with an adult who demonstrates a novel and arbitrary action, children as young as 14 months (Gergely et al., 2002, Meltzoff, 1988) will imitate that action. One question is whether toddlers can acquire a novel behavior that they observe in a third-party interaction. Gergely and Csibra (2005) argued that, at an early age, direct teaching interactions may be necessary for children to acquire novel behaviors (what they called “new and cognitively opaque” behaviors [p. 463]), and there is reason to believe that the ability to learn from a third-party interaction (hereafter third-party learning) may be related to changes in representational capacity that emerge during the second year.

Infants can form primary representations (i.e., representations of things as they really are) of what they perceive (Leslie, 1987, Perner, 1991), but during the middle of the second year they begin to coordinate these primary representations with secondary representations (Perner, 1991, Suddendorf and Whiten, 2001), that is, representations of hypothetical and pretend situations as well as of the past and the future. Secondary representation involves keeping one thing in mind while perceiving another thing. One type of secondary representation that may play a role in third-party learning involves simulating another’s perspective, essentially maintaining a mental image of the other’s perspective even when it differs from one’s own perception of the current situation.

More specifically, Moore (2007) hypothesized that young children’s third-party learning of arbitrary information (actions and words) depends on their ability to imagine themselves as participants in the third-party interaction, simulating perhaps the perspective of the learner in the third-party interaction. Direct interactions might not require this type of imaginative ability given that eye contact, contingency, and other ostensive–communicative cues that are characteristic of direct interactions allow infants to imitate novel actions without necessarily needing to take the other’s perspective (Gergely and Csibra, 2005, Moore, 2006). These cues might not be necessary for third-party emulation (copying end results without employing the same means as the demonstrator) or the reproduction of nonarbitrary actions seen in a third-party interaction (C. Moore, personal communication, October 2007). But without ostensive cues, Moore’s hypothesis is that children will not be able to imitatively learn novel behaviors (copying a novel and arbitrary means to an end) from a third-party interaction unless they are able to imagine themselves in that interaction.

The ability to imagine themselves as participants in third-party interactions may rely on children’s understanding of self–other equivalence, that is, the understanding that they themselves and others have both first- and third-person characteristics. Early in development, it is only the third-person characteristics of others (e.g., what it looks like when others are behaving) and their own first-person perspective (e.g., what it feels like when they themselves are behaving) that infants have access to because they are directly perceived (Moore, 2006). Self–other equivalence involves a specific type of secondary representation that is manifested in an understanding of the self as an objective entity (imagining a third-person perspective on the self) as well as an understanding of others’ subjective experiences (imagining others’ first-person perspectives).

Both of these manifestations of self–other equivalence—understanding the self and understanding others—become apparent during the middle of the second year. Several studies have demonstrated that self-awareness (as assessed by a mirror self-recognition task) and other-awareness (as assessed by a synchronic imitation task) emerge in tandem (Asendorpf and Baudonniere, 1993, Asendorpf et al., 1996, Nielsen and Dissanayake, 2004). As synchronic imitation requires understanding the reciprocal roles of model and imitator as well as a desire to be like the other, it is considered an excellent indicator of other-awareness (Nielsen & Dissanayake, 2004). Toddlers who demonstrate mirror self-recognition are more likely to evidence advanced other-directed pretend play than are toddlers who do not demonstrate self-recognition (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004), and self-recognition is positively correlated with empathic responses to another’s distress (Bischof-Kohler, 1991; see also Johnson, 1982). Thus, self-understanding and other-understanding appear to develop synchronously during the second year (Asendorpf, 2002). The question we address in this study is whether these developments are related to third-party learning of arbitrary actions.

Moore (2007) suggested that when children understand self–other equivalence, they are able to imagine themselves in the place of one of the participants in a third-party interaction. A strong version of Moore’s hypothesis, then, is that until children achieve this understanding, they will be unable to engage in third-party learning. This hypothesis is indirectly supported by studies showing that 14-month-olds were unlikely to imitate a novel action of a person who was not interacting with them (Kiraly, Kreko, Kupan, Csibra, & Gergely, 2004), but at 18 months—the age when self–other equivalence is emerging—children are able to learn a novel word from a third-party interaction (Floor & Akhtar, 2006).

The current study examined a weaker version of Moore’s hypothesis—that understanding self–other equivalence is related to third-party learning of novel actions. We anticipated, on the basis of Floor and Akhtar’s (2006) findings, that some percentage of 18- to 20-month-olds would be able to imitatively learn a novel (arbitrary) action from a third-party interaction. Our primary purpose was to test whether imitative learning of a novel action seen in a third-party interaction is related to children’s knowledge of self–other equivalence, as assessed by their self-understanding (imagining a third-person perspective on the self) and their ability to take another’s perspective (imagining another’s first-person perspective). Thus, the hypothesis was that participants who did imitatively learn from a third-party interaction would be more likely to pass a test of mirror self-recognition (Amsterdam, 1972) and would be more likely to engage in Level 1 perspective taking (Flavell, 1992).