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Results for “Imitative Behavior”

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Infants predict other people's action goals.

Do infants come to understand other people's actions through a mirror neuron system that maps an observed action onto motor representations of that action? We demonstrate that a specialized system for action perception guides proactive goal-directed eye movements in 12-month-old but not in 6-month-old infants, providing direct support for this view. The activation of this system requires observing an interaction between the hand of the agent and an object.

Adult↗

The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction.

The discovery of premotor and parietal cells known as mirror neurons in the macaque brain that fire not only when the animal is in action, but also when it observes others carrying out the same actions provides a plausible neurophysiological mechanism for a variety of important social behaviours, from imitation to empathy. Recent data also show that dysfunction of the mirror neuron system in humans might be a core deficit in autism, a socially isolating condition. Here, we review the neurophysiology of the mirror neuron system and its role in social cognition and discuss the clinical implications of mirror neuron dysfunction.

Animals↗

The power of memes.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Anthropology, Cultural↗

Profiles of grammatical morphology and sentence imitation in children with specific language impairment and Down syndrome.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the grammatical morphology and sentence imitation performance of two different groups of children with language impairment and to compare their performance with that of children learning language typically. Expressive use of tense-bearing and non-tense-related grammatical morphemes was explored. Children with specific language impairment (SLI), with Down syndrome (DS), and with typical language development (TL) were matched on mean length of utterance (MW). Performance was compared primarily on composite measures of tense, tense inflections, and non-tense morphemes, as well as on the Sentences subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R; D. Wechsler, 1989). Exploratory analyses were completed on a set of 11 individual grammatical morphemes as a follow-up to the principal analyses. As predicted, the children with SLI performed significantly more poorly than the children with TL on all three composite measures. In addition, the DS group exhibited significantly weaker performance than did the TL group on the tense inflections and non-tense morpheme composites. Although there were no statistically reliable differences between the SLI and DS groups on any morpheme measure, the groups were not comparably weak in their use of the regular post, -ed; the irregular third person singular morphemes (e.g., has, does); the present progressive, -ing; or the use of modals. The SLI and DS groups both performed more poorly than did the TL group on the sentence imitation task.

Child↗

A comparison of learning curves in natural and synthesized speech comprehension.

This study examined the effect of listening practice on the ability of young adults to comprehend natural speech and DECtalk synthesized speech by having them perform a sentence verification task over a 5-day period. Results showed that response latencies of participants shortened in a similar fashion to sentences presented in both types of speech across the 5-day period, with latencies remaining significantly longer in response to DECtalk than to natural speech across the days. These results suggest that high-quality synthesized speech, such as DECtalk, can be useful in many human factors applications.

Adolescent↗

Nonword repetition by children with cochlear implants: accuracy ratings from normal-hearing listeners.

Seventy-six children with cochlear implants completed a nonword repetition task. The children were presented with 20 nonword auditory patterns over a loud-speaker and were asked to repeat them aloud to the experimenter. The children's responses were recorded on digital audiotape and then played back to normal-hearing adult listeners to obtain accuracy ratings on a 7-point scale. The children's nonword repetition performance, as measured by these perceptual accuracy ratings, could be predicted in large part by their performance on independently collected measures of speech perception, verbal rehearsal speed, and speech production. The strongest contributing variable was speaking rate, which is widely argued to reflect verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. Children who had become deaf at older ages received higher perceptual ratings. Children whose early linguistic experience and educational environments emphasized oral communication methods received higher perceptual ratings than children enrolled in total communication programs. The present findings suggest that individual differences in performance on nonword repetition are strongly related to variability observed in the component processes involved in language imitation tasks, including measures of speech perception, speech production, and especially verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. In addition, onset of deafness at a later age and an educational environment emphasizing oral communication may be beneficial to the children's ability to develop the robust phonological processing skills necessary to accurately repeat novel, nonword sound patterns.

Child↗

Imitation and language development: issues and clinical implications.

The relationship between imitation and language learning is of both theoretical and clinical interest. While current psycholinguistic accounts give imitation only a limited role in language learning, learning theorists and others continue to refer to imitation as a major factor in the child's acquisition of language. Clinicians deal with imitation in modeling procedures as well as in counseling parents about how to promote children's language development. A review of theory and research on the nature and development of imitation reveals wide variation in terminology, definitions, and explanations. The clinical use of imitation procedures have greater significance for the acquisition of communication skills than for the development of linguistic structure.

Child↗

Transfer of /r/ across contexts.

This study was designed to determine if training on any one specific /r/ allophone would result in transfer to other /r/ allophones without specific training. Twelve grade school children who were unable to imitate correctly the /r/, /sigma/, and /gamma/ allophones in 40 stimulus items during baseline served as subjects. A multiple baseline was used: six subjects served as controls while six were trained, after which the first six were trained. Each subject received training on a randomly assigned syllable representing a specific allophone of /r/. After training, generalization to the untrained /r/s was assessed. Since most subjects increased the number of correct responses to items in several allophonic categories regardless of the specific allophone taught, the different allophones of /r/ may be members of the same response class rather than independent of one another.

Child↗