Imitation is an essential skill in the acquisition of language and communication skills. An initial phase in teaching young children with autism to engage in appropriate affective responding may be to teach the imitation of facial models. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, imitation training (consisting of modeling, prompting, differential reinforcement, and error correction)...

Learning by imitation is an essential process in human cognition. Recently, imitation learning has also become important in robotics research. We address the problem of learning by imitation in interactive, robotic agents using case-based reasoning. We describe two tasks for which case-based reasoning may be used: (i) interpretation, in which the robot interprets new skill demonstrations as bei...

BACKGROUND The present study sought to examine the specificity, developmental correlates, nature and pervasiveness of imitation deficits very early in the development of autism. METHODS Subjects were 24 children with autism (mean age 34 months), 18 children with fragile X syndrome, 20 children with other developmental disorders, and 15 typically-developing children. Tasks included manual, ora...

Imitation offers a powerful mechanism for knowledge acquisition, particularly for intelligent agents (like infants) that lack the ability to transfer knowledge using language. Several algorithms and models have recently been proposed for imitation learning in humans and robots. However, few proposals offer a framework for imitation learning in noisy stochastic environments where the imitator mu...

Humans have an automatic tendency to imitate others. Previous studies on how we control these tendencies have focused on reactive mechanisms, where inhibition of imitation is implemented after seeing an action. This work suggests that reactive control of imitation draws on at least partially specialized mechanisms. Here, we examine preparatory imitation control, where advance information allows...

Imitation is a complex behaviour built on many different cognitive components. This review examines whether the mirror system provides a unitary brain system, dedicated to imitation. The data suggests we can distinguish a visuomotor stream which permits both imitation and other visual-to-motor transformations, and also a top-down control mechanism. Working together, these systems permit both so...

This paper summarises some previously published work on imitation, experimentation (or innovation) and aspiration thresholds using the FEARLUS modelling system and reports new work with FEARLUS extending these studies. Results are discussed in the context of existing literature on imitation and innovation in related contexts. A form of imitation in which land uses are selected on the criterion ...