Delayed & elicited imitation during infancy

There is also evidence that certain learning abilities are present soon after birth. Meltzoff and colleagues found that infants aged forty-two minutes old, when delayed the ability for imitating an adults facial movements, e.g. mouth openings and tongue thrusts, demonstrated increased imitative behaviors to a targeted expressionless adult face after removal of a pacifier (Meltzoff, 1990ab; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977, 1985). Delay recognition testing by the same authors with infants the same age produced greater tongue protrusions after the tongue protrusion display disappeared and was replaced with passive-face demonstrations (Meltzoff & Moore, 1989). These findings suggest that simple retrieval processes with temporally brief delays can be activated shortly after birth. Moreover with maturation the delay period associated with retrieval continues development and expansion. For instance the six week old infant demonstrates the ability for recognition and retrieval as it protrudes its tongue to a motionless gestural-free face that just 24 hours earlier was associated with tongue protrusion (Meltzoff & Moore, 1994). These findings led these authors to conclude that delayed recall is reflective of “nonverbal declarative memory” (Meltzoff, 1995, p. 511) because it is not stimulus bound in the same way as nondeclarative-implicit memory (Meltzoff & Moore, 1997). These findings suggest that the ability for retrieval, i.e. event recreation from memory, is apparent very early during ontogenetic development (Meltzoff, 1995). They also support the theory that different memory systems develop in a concurrent rather than consecutive manner.

References

Meltzoff, A.N. (1990a). Foundations for developing a concept of self: the role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring, social modeling, and self practice in infancy. In: D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), The self in transition (pp. 139-164). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Meltzoff, A.N. (1990b). Towards a developmental cognitive science. The implications of cross-modal matching and imitation for the development of representation and memory in infancy. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, 608, 1-31.

Meltzoff, A.N. (1995). What infant memory tells us about infantile amnesia: long-term recall and deferred imitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 59, 497-515.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore, M.K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198(4312), 74-78.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore M.K. (1985). Cognitive foundations and social functions of imitation and intermodal representation in infancy. In: J. Mehler & R. Fox (Eds.), Neonate cognition: beyond the blooming buzzing confusion (pp. 139-156). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore, M.K. (1994). Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 83-99.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore, M.K. (1989). Imitation in newborn infants: exploring the range of gestures imitated and the underlying mechanisms. Developmental Psychology, 25(6), 954-962.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore, M.K. (1997). Explaining facial imitation: a theoretical model. Early Development and Parenting, 6, 179-192.

Delayed and elicited imitation during early childhood

Deferred and elicited imitation paradigms allow for the monitoring of age-dependent developmental explicit processes (Mandler, 1990). Deferred and elicited imitation tasks provide infants and toddlers with an initial brief display of adult behavioral sequences that comprise a targeted act (Bauer, 1997; Meltzoff, 1990). During the learning phase infants and young children observe these sequences but are neither allowed to handle novel learning props nor permitted to practice observed developmentally-sensitive adult behavioral sequences. At a predetermined future time each infant and child is placed in the same or similar context with props reminiscent of the original learning session. Each child is experimentally observed to assess recall ability for the initial adult behavioral sequences. The paradigm, despite lack of verbal declaration, is likely explicit and declarative in nature due to its fast learning requirement, its need for temporal order and flexibility, and recreation and retrieval of previously observed behavioral sequences (Carver, Bauer, & Nelson, 2000). With increasing paradigm complexity older children are required to generalize previously observed adult behaviors to like situations. Deferred and elicited imitation paradigms require multimodal sensory processing; during the initial learning session infants and children engage either or both auditory and visual senses in response to adult behaviors and prop usage. During the delayed recall session evidence of memory recreation and recall ability is imputed in tactile manipulations of props and toys and behaviors reminiscent of the initial adult behavioral display. Further a role for the hippocampus and declarative processes in mediating learning of deferred imitation tasks has been confirmed; unlike normal controls amnesic patients (without a viable hippocampal region) are impaired in their reproduction of previously observed behavioral sequences (McDonough, Mandler, McKee, & Squire, 1995).

Deferred and elicited imitation studies can provide a method for analyzing and assessing age dependent cognitive abilities. The findings demonstrate age-dependent competency with increasing task complexities, i.e. increasing the number of behavioral sequencing and the broadening of delay periods. For instance six-month old infants can perform a deferred imitation task requiring the infant to initially observe one behavioral sequence of an experimenter reach for an apparatus. After a 24 hour delay infants can imitatively reach for the same prop with no prompting (Collie & Hayne, 1999). By nine months nearly one half of sampled infants after observing multiple step sequences of play manipulation of a toy car are able to reproduce the same sequences five weeks later. Cue reexposure helps to support the remainder of this sample to successfully reproduce earlier observed behavioral sequences (Carver & Bauer, 1999). The majority of sampled eleven month olds can learn to imitate two (to as much as four) behavioral sequences, e.g. making a toy car go up, placing it on top of a surface, rolling it down an incline, and recalling and behaviorally expressing this knowledge after a one week delay. Infants between 13-20 months of age are able to age dependently remember and behaviorally express 2-5 step sequences (e.g. helping Big Bird go for a ride, putting a toy bear in a seat and feeding it fruits, and cleaning up the testing room) observed eight months earlier (Bauer, Hertsgaard, & Dow, 1994). With advancing maturity twenty four month olds can learn to imitate as many as five behavioral sequences with delays as long as six weeks (Bauer, 1996). Task activity across ages has been accompanied by mean number of 13 expressed words about prop location by 13 month olds, 40 expressed words by 16 month olds, and 178.2 words by 20 month olds. By age 36-40 months children are able to provide coherent narratives about previously observed events in environments free from earlier observed cues of behavioral sequences (Bauer & Wewerka, 1995, 1997). Furthermore the ability for maintaining preferred and familiar canonical temporal sequencing order (Bauer & Thal, 1990) and generalizing and applying the use of unrelated distracter props and earlier observed behavioral sequences (Lechuga, Marcos-Ruiz, & Bauer, 2001) is achieved by 21 and 25 months respectively. In fact, 28 month olds can impute temporal sequencing to observe behavioral sequences viewed two weeks earlier (Bauer, Hertsgaard, Dropik, & Daly, 1998).

Therefore the deferred and elicited imitation findings demonstrate increasing age-dependent abilities, which are characterized by increasing task-related complexities and temporal recall delays. These increased competencies are also accompanied by the later development of increasing abilities for maintaining temporal order and for generalizing like-situations.

References

Bauer, P.J. (1996). What do infants recall of their lives? Memory for specific events by one to two-year-olds. American Psychologist, 51(1), 29-41.

Bauer, P.J. (1997). Development of memory in early childhood. In: N. Cowan & C. Hulme (Eds.), The development of memory in childhood (pp. 83-111). East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.

Bauer, P.J., Hertsgaard, L.A., & Dow, G.A. (1994). After 8 months have passed: long-term recall of events by 1- to 2-year-old children. Memory, 2(4), 353-82.

Bauer, P.J., Hertsgaard, L.A., Dropik, P., & Daly, B.P. (1998). When even arbitrary order becomes important: develops in reliable temporal sequencing of arbitrarily ordered events. Memory, 6(2), 165-198.

Bauer, P.J., & Thal, D.J. (1990). Scripts or scraps: reconsidering the development of sequential understanding. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50(2), 287-304.

Bauer, P.J., & Wewerka, S.S. (1995). One-to two-year-olds’ recall of events: the more expressed, the more impressed. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 59(3), 475-96.

Bauer, P.J., & Wewerka, S.S. (1997). Saying is revealing: verbal expression of event memory in the transition from infancy to early childhood. In: P.W. van den Broek, P.J. Bauer, & T. Bourg (Eds.), Developmental spans in event comprehension and representation. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

Carver, L.J., & Bauer, P.J. (1999). When the event is more than the sum of its parts: a 9-month-olds’ long-term ordered recall. Memory, 7(2), 147-74.

Carver, L.J., Bauer, P.J., & Nelson, C.A. (2000). Associations between infant brain activity and recall memory. Developmental Science, 3(2), 234-246.

Collie, R., & Hayne, H. (1999). Deferred imitation by 6- and 9-month-old infants: more evidence for declarative memory. Developmental Psychobiology, 35(2), 83-90.

Lechuga, M.T., Marcos-Ruiz, R., & Bauer, P.J. (2001). Episodic recall of specifics and generalizations coexist in 25-month-old children. Memory, 9(2), 117-132.

Mandler, J.M. (1990). Recall of events by preverbal children. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, 608, 485-503.

McDonough, L., Mandler, J.M., McKee, R.D., & Squire, L.R. (1995). The deferred imitation task as a nonverbal measure of declarative memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U S A, 92(16), 7580-4.

Meltzoff, A.N. (1990). Towards a developmental cognitive science. The implications of cross-modal matching and imitation for the development of representation and memory in infancy. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, 608, 1-31.