Imitation requires the imitator to solve the correspondence problem to translate visual information from modelled action into matching motor output. It has been widely accepted for some 30 years that the correspondence problem is solved by a specialised, innate cognitive mechanism. This is the conclusion of a poverty of the stimulus argument, realised in the active intermodal matching model of ...

Evidence for successful socio-cognitive training in typical adults is rare. This study attempted to improve Theory of Mind (ToM) and visual perspective taking in healthy adults by training participants to either imitate or to inhibit imitation. Twenty-four hours after training, all participants completed tests of ToM and visual perspective taking. The group trained to inhibit their tendency to ...

In both economic and evolutionary theories of games, two general classes evolution can be identified: 1) dynamics based on myopic optimization 2) imitations or replications. The collective behavior structured populations governed by these vary significantly. Particularly in social dilemmas, optimizations typically lead to Nash equilibrium payoffs that are well below the optimum, e.g., <italic x...

Previous studies have suggested that imitators can reproduce known gestures shown by a model using a semantic, indirect route, and novel gestures using a sublexical, direct route. In the present study we aimed at testing the validity of such a dual-route model of action imitation. Patients with either left-brain damage (LBD) or right-brain damage (RBD) were tested on an action imitation task. A...

A fundamental challenge in neuroscience is to understand the mechanisms by which multicomponent actions are represented and sequenced for production. We addressed this challenge with a movement-imitation task in which subjects viewed the quasi-random, two-dimensional movements of a disc and then used a stylus to reproduce the remembered trajectory. The stimulus disc moved along straight segment...

Imitation is a powerful mechanism for eecient learning of novel behaviors that both supports and takes advantage of sociality. A fundamental problem for imitation is to create an appropriate (partial) mapping between the body of the system being imitated and the imitator. By considering for each of these two systems an associated automata (resp. transformation semigroup) structure, attempts at ...

What, if anything, is special about human imitation? An evaluation of enculturated apes' imitation skills, a "best case scenario" of non-human apes' imitation performance, reveals important similarities and differences between this special population of apes and human children. Candidates for shared imitation mechanisms include the ability to imitate various familiar transitive responses and ob...

The imitative ability of nonhuman animals has intrigued a number of scholars and, in doing so, has generated a considerable amount of controversy. Although it is clear that many species can learn via observational learning, there is a lack of consensus concerning both what sorts of things can be learned by watching others and what types of observational learning should count as imitation. These...

We propose an extension of the study of imitation in artefacts in which imitation takes place at the populationlevel. Instead of assuming a one-to-one teacher-student relation between agents, agents in our set-up take on no particular role and have to build up a repertoire of actions through imitative interaction with all other agents in the population. This allows us to study the sufficient an...

What do tying shoelaces, hitting a golf ball, and square dancing have in common? Each can be learned by imitation, a major way that people of all ages acquire and master important skills. Imitation has been widely studied in infants, children and young adults, but until now, not in older adults. In fact, imitation learning is especially important in the everyday activities of older adults as th...