People Learn by 'Over-imitating' the Acts of Others, New Study Concludes

The adage that children watch what you are doing too much to hear what you're saying holds true, said researchers in a recent press release. They have discovered that imitation is one of the primary ways that children, and adults, learn what to do.

Infact, said the researchers from Yale University, they discovered that children imitate adults so much that when an adult does something that doesn't make sense, or is confusion, or does it the 'hard' way instead of a simpler way, children follow suit.

Children try to perform the same type of complicated, confusion actions as they attempt to replicate, or imitate, the same actions as the adults. The researchers referred to this as 'over imitation.'

It's not a surprise to read that children imitate adults. People have known this for years. Yet this study showed that a child who was successful at a task before seeing anyone else do it, changed how they performed the task after watching adults attempt the same task.

The children kept trying to replicate the actions of others, even when these tasks didn't work.

Ask yourself a question. Have you ever found yourself confused, perhaps about using your computer, and asked someone else to help you? When they showed you what to do, did they include steps that you really didn't need?

When you tried to do the same task later, did you try to replicate all of their actions, including the ones that were not necessary - or just the actions that produced the intended result?

If you're like most people, you tried to replicate all of their actions, even the one's that you didn't understand because 'that's how they did it,' until you had successfully learned how to perform that activity and made your own decisions.

In this study, researchers allowed children to figure out how to manipulate an object (some type of a prize) and retrieve it from a clear, acrylic box. The children were then allowed to watch adults try to perform the same activity.

However, these adults did not follow the same steps to get the prize. Instead, the adults added many unnecessary steps that actually made the task much more difficult that it needed to be.

After watching the adult, the children were asked to retrieve the object again. Remember, these children had already figured out how to get the object on their own and were successful in their endeavors.

But after watching the adults around them? The children tried to imitate the same steps that they had seen adults take. Researchers said that it was as if the children had totally forgotten how to think on their own, and defaulted to doing what they had observed.

They concluded that while people are learning something new, they over-imitate others in the process of learning, even when they know that there is an easier way to accomplish something.

Researchers at Yale University announced their findings to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/yu-hah120507.php
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