Abstract
Skepticism toward the existence of neonatal differential imitation is fostered by views that assign it an excessive significance, making it foundational for social cognition. Moreover, a misleading theoretical framework may generate unwarranted expectations about the kinds of findings experimentalists are supposed to look for. Hence we propose a theoretical analysis that may help experimentalists address the empirical question of whether early differential imitation really exists. We distinguish three models of early imitation. The first posits automatic visuo-motor links evolved for sociocognitive functions and we call it Genetically Programmed Direct Matching (GPDM). The second is Meltzoff and Moore’s Active Intermodal Matching (AIM), which postulates a comparison between the acts of self and other. The third is the alternative we propose and we call it “Association by Similarity Theory” (AST), as it relies on the tacit functioning of this domain-general process. AST describes early imitation merely as the differential induction or elicitation of behaviors that already tend to occur spontaneously. We focus on the contrast between AIM and AST, and argue that AST is preferable to AIM for two reasons. First, AST is more parsimonious and more plausible, especially because it does not require infants to be able to recognize self-other similarities. Second, whereas the extant findings tend to disqualify AIM, AST can account for them adequately. Furthermore, we suggest that AST has the potential to give new impulse to empirical research because it discriminates promising lines of inquiry from unproductive ones.
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Notes
Our definition is deliberately inclusive. Primarily, we want the definition to capture the representational basis of an impulse to a specific action. Therefore, we say that an action representation is activated even if not all the motor codes of the action are activated. Indeed, an awakened impulse may not be complied with because of antagonistic conditions and, in this case, it is reasonable to assume that not all the motor codes of the action have been activated (in this regard, see also the use of the expression “action planning” in Zoia et al. 2007). However, we also want the expression to be able to designate the processing relative to a full-fledged action execution. Here the impulse to act is complied with, all motor codes originating the action are (presumably) activated, and the proprioceptive feedback (normally) conforms to what could be expected from the action.
Even Meltzoff and Moore (1994), who investigated the “unusual” tongue-protrusion-to-the-side behavior, found that, in a 90-s test period, such behavior was spontaneously produced by 6 infants out of 30 who had never seen the tongue-protrusion-to-the-side model.
All three models can share the assumption that infants prefer social stimuli such as faces, eyes, or traits of the human voice to other non-social stimuli. This common assumption allows all of them to explain why it is not easy to solicit imitation with non-social stimuli (Legerstee 1991)—e.g. by stating that the non-social stimuli do not present interesting features that attract the infant’s attention. Indeed, the non-social stimuli presented by Legerstee (1991) do not present the kinds of perceptual features that are attractive to newborns (Simion et al. 2011).
The distinction between AIM and a mirror neuron based model is reiterated in Meltzoff (2009, p. 38) where it is argued that the latter would not account for presumed features of NI such as “response correction” and “the imitation of novel acts.”
Notoriously, terms like “nativism” or “innate” have many different meanings (Griffiths 2002; Maclaurin 2002). For example, by “innate” one might mean “existing from birth” or “something existing prior to birth” (Gallagher 2005, p. 73). This usage of the term does not distinguish between models of NI because all models must posit that the capacity to activate corresponding action representations exists at birth. We submit that notion of nativism we adopt in this paper is a pregnant one because it helps distinguish different models of NI.
See Kugiumutzakis (1999) for an exception.
“Because any object or situation experienced by an individual is unlikely to recur in exactly the same form and context, psychology’s first general law should, I suggest, be a law of generalization” (Shepard 1987, p. 1317).
The functioning of association by similarity can be highlighted in a classic example of Piagetian assimilation, the child who, looking at a zebra, says “that’s a horse.”
Perhaps James provided us with the model of any neural formulation of association by similarity when he hypothesized that the evocation of an object occurs when a stimulus is “due to a brain-process some of whose elements awaken through habit some of the elements of the brain-process of the object which comes to view” (1981, p. 556).
Obviously, it is possible to compare the present object with another object. For example, after I see a car parked on the street, when I walk pass by it I can think, “This car is like my friend’s car because it has just two doors.” However, this kind of comparison is not necessary to see the car as a car in the first place.
Keven and Akins 2016, sect. 7, para. 2
The tactile mode can also contribute to the infant’s registration of the relative positions of organs in the body and of the usual configurations they assume. For example, the fetus can touch its face, mouth, nose and eyes and experience the disposition of these organs (Kurjak et al. 2004); such a “tactile image” may be integrated in the experience of spatial positions acquired through proprioception.
In footnote 2, we noted that Meltzoff and Moore (1994) found that infants produce TP-to-the-side spontaneously. Keven and Akins (2016) suggest that TP-to-the-side belongs to the action repertoire of the fetus eight weeks before birth. Nonetheless, we should not exclude a priori that an infant might imitate TP-to-the-side before having executed it spontaneously. AST would explain this circumstance as follows. It may be that the perceived action presents features that are experienced to different degrees in different actions already accomplished by the subject, but none of these actions instantiated all of them. This may lead to the activation of a bodily part that is more strongly associated with some features presented by the model than the bodily part involved in the corresponding action (the laterality of TP-to-the-side activates head lateral movement—cf. Meltzoff and Moore 1997, p. 182). However, with time, the fact that action features are awakened that do not correspond to any particular spontaneous action may lead to a new configuration in action planning (a new Gestalt: TP-to-the-side), so that a new action is extrapolated and induced starting from an action repertoire.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
As a consequence of being more parsimonious from a cognitive-psychological point of view, AST is also more biologically plausible. Both AST and AIM require that brain processes encoding a specific visual model activate brain processes encoding the corresponding action. Otherwise imitation could not occur. In addition to this, AIM postulates an “equivalence detector” that produces “match” or “mismatch” outputs. Where is the equivalence detector, where are the comparison outputs located in the brain? These postulates look particularly cumbersome from a biological point of view. Moreover, AIM suggests that the information characterizing each action is encoded twice, i.e. as input from vision and as input from proprioception. In contrast, AST merely entails that visual processes are associated with corresponding motor process so that the former can activate the latter. Hence the action-characterizing information can be encoded only once, in the areas where the two kinds of processes overlap. For these reasons, AST can be more easily substantiated by neuroscientific research than AIM.
The idea that NI does not fulfill any decisive socio-cognitive or social function is supported by the fact that, contrary to expectations, Coulon et al. (2013) found that newborns did not imitate more when the modeled gesture was accompanied by the “congruent” auditory social stimulus (e.g. mouth opening with sound [a]). However, as anticipated in footnote 3, it is clear that AST does not exclude the existence of innate social propensities of other kinds. For example, it is compatible with Coulon et al.’s (2013) finding that newborns looked significantly longer at “audiovisual congruent” stimuli and with the hypothesis that newborns may have an innate preference for these kinds of stimuli.
It is not so much that newborns are split into “imitators” or “non-imitators” (Simpson et al. 2014), although it is true that some infants may have greater motor and visual capacities and may have a greater inclination for social stimuli than others. Rather, there are many subtle factors that affect the behavior of infants and these factors may impede the imitative response. Along these lines, AST can elegantly accommodate Jones’ (2009) observations concerning tongue protrusion as arousal response. In AST arousal can still function as a reinforcing motivation for tongue-protrusion execution, which would help explain the predominance of tongue-protrusion in NI studies.
We take it that it is difficult to elicit in an infant from 0 to 8 weeks an action that it is very little disposed to execute. In this case, awakening the representations of certain morphokinetic events would constitute too weak of a motivation, almost negligible, compared to other tendencies that may condition the infant at the given moment. The activation of those representations is much more likely to be effective in bringing about the action if it is combined with a certain easiness of activation of the motor components of the action, i.e. if it is combined with a spontaneous action inclination. Note that by itself a spontaneous action inclination may often not be enough to provoke the relevant action because an infant may be conditioned by antagonistic inclinations, or by a variety of internal and external stimuli. In NI the activation of components of an action representation through vision will combine with the easiness of activation of the motor components of that action representation so as to modulate action execution. Specifically, the representation of specific morphokinetic features will more effectively activate the motor components with which it has been associated in spontaneous behavior because those motor components are already characterized by a certain easiness of activation.
The number for tongue protrusion was retrieved and averaged across the following studies: Heimann and Schaller 1985; Heimann et al. 1989; Meltzoff and Moore 1989; Nagy et al. 2013; Ullstadius 1998; that for mouth opening across the following: Coulon et al. 2013; Heimann and Schaller 1985; Heimann et al. 1989. Compare these frequencies with that of, for example, spontaneous lip movements, i.e. 0.14 per minute (Ekman and Rosenberg 1997). Frequencies for the other gestures can be found in other studies and are significantly lower than those for tongue protrusion and mouth opening (Meltzoff and Moore 1989; Kurjak et al. 2004; Oostenbroek et al. 2016).
More precisely, “internal validity” refers to the degree of certainty that manipulation of the independent variable is responsible for observed changes in the dependent variable.
One could argue that there can be better implementations of AIM than Oostenbroek et al.’ study. However, while this study can be considered as a legitimate implementation of AIM, it cannot be taken to be a legitimate implementation of AST.
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SV received support from the UNAM Post-doctoral Fellowships Program.
The authors thank Shaun Gallagher, Eugene Buder, Deborah Tollefsen, Albert Newen, Yeh Hsueh, Ulrich Mueller, and Joseph Arizpe for providing detailed comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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SV is lead author and wrote the final version. YJ made contributions to a previous version that were integrated in the final version. YJ reviewed and accepted the final version.
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Vincini, S., Jhang, Y. Association but not Recognition: an Alternative Model for Differential Imitation from 0 to 2 Months. Rev.Phil.Psych. 9, 395–427 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0373-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0373-0