Deferred imitation in 9- and 14- months old Infants: A longitudinal study of a Swedish sample

• This study investigated deferred imitation using a longitudinal design. A total of 62Swedish children (32 girls) were tested at both 9 and 14 months of age. The memorydelay interval was 10 minutes at 9 months and five minutes at 14 months of age. Atboth ages children in the imitation group displayed significantly more target actionsafter modelling than the children in the control group, thus replicating earlierreports of imitation from memory. It was found that individual children with atendency to perform low deferred imitation at 9 months of age tended to remain lowon the test at 14 months, thus raising the possibility of stable individual differencesin imitation. This study provides a first investigation of deferred imitationlongitudinally among young children, and supports recent theoretical claims thatdeferred imitation arises earlier in ontogeny than was hypothesized by classicaltheory. It was observed that there are cultural differences in the way that Swedishversus American adult-infant pairs act in the test situation and ideas are offeredregarding the roots of such differences.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Deferred imitation

infants

memory

longitudinal study

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)