Purpose: Infants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produce fewer play actions and gestures than neurotypical infants (e.g., Mastrogiuseppe et al., 2015; Veness et al., 2012; Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether different "types" of actions and gestures are more or less likely to develop…

The present study tests whether presenting video modeling examples from the learner's (first-person) perspective promotes learning of an assembly task, compared to presenting video examples from a third-person perspective. Across 2 experiments conducted in different labs, university students viewed a video showing how to assemble an 8-component…

This study asked whether children's tendency to imitate selectively (ignore causally unnecessary actions) versus faithfully ("overimitate" causally unnecessary actions) varies across ages and social contexts. In the first experiment, 2-year-olds and 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to play 1 of 3 prior games with a demonstrator: a…

Understanding the actions of others depends on the insight that these actions are structured by intentional relations. In a number of conceptual domains, comparison with familiar instances has been shown to support children's and adults' ability to discern the relational structure of novel instances. Recent evidence suggests that this process…

Since their discovery in the early 1990s, mirror neurons have been proposed to be related to many social-communicative abilities, such as imitation. However, research into the early manifestations of the putative neural mirroring system and its role in early social development is still inconclusive. In the current EEG study, mu suppression,…

Developmental changes in learning from peers and adults during the second year of life were assessed using an imitation paradigm. Independent groups of 15- and 24-month-old infants watched a prerecorded video of an unfamiliar child or adult model demonstrating a series of actions with objects. When learning was assessed immediately, 15-month-old…

This study examined whether young children are able to imitate a robot's goal-directed actions. Children (24-35 months old) viewed videos showing a robot attempting to manipulate an object (e.g., putting beads inside a cup) but failing to achieve its goal (e.g., beads fell outside the cup). In 1 video, the robot made eye contact with a human…

The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal participants. Participants were asked to respond with their right- or left-hand to the accuracy of an observed (dynamic) grasp while they were holding precision or power grasp response devices in their hands (e.g., precision device/right-hand; power…

We report data from a group of patients with mild Alzheimer's disease on a range of tasks requiring either stored semantic knowledge about objects (e.g., naming object use) or the execution of action to objects (e.g., miming and using objects). We found that the patients were impaired at miming in response to objects, even when they could describe…

The research compared the effect of three play procedures upon the frequency and duration of object manipulation by six autistic children (four to six years old). The interaction procedure, in which the experimenter imitated both the material and the method of play chosen by the autistic child, resulted in greater frequency and duration of object…

Deferred imitation of object-related actions was studied at two ages, 12 and 18 months, to examine development of competence in observational learning. Three task categories were investigated: simple/single reiterative, and sequentially coordinated actions. Examination of partial successes at both ages was useful for suggesting phases in…

The purpose of this study was to longitudinally examine the development of symbolic play in 2-year-old Japanese infants. The subjects were four children who were individually tested once a month from the age of 12 to 24 months in laboratory settings. Assessment materials consisted of three sets of miniature toys, a doll and junk objects. Each set…

Synergistic psychology has been proposed as a meta theory for synthesizing different psychological theories into an explanation of how social, cognitive, and biological factors interact in human behavior. The basic theoretical assumption in synergistic psychology is that internalized social interactions become higher mental functions that regulate…