The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of being imitated on behaviors of preschool children. Each of 24 subjects was given a choice of three responses in a marble-dropping task and was required to make one choice, after which an experimenter either imitated or did not imitate a subject's behavior. The results indicated that when a response is imitated by an experimenter, the response frequency is maintained; however, when a response that was previously imitated was no longer imitated, the response frequency significantly decreased. These results were interpreted as providing evidence that behavioral similarly produced by an experimenter has positive reinforcing properties. (Author)