Miklósi A
Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 1999 Aug;74(3):347-74. doi: 10.1017/s000632319900537x.
Theorists and experimental researchers have long debated whether animals are able to imitate. A variety of definitions of imitation have been proposed to describe this complex form of social learning. Experimental research on imitation has often been hampered by either a too loose 'anthropomorphic' approach or by too narrow 'behaviourist' definitions. At present neither associative nor cognitive theories are able to offer an exhaustive explanation of imitation in animals. An ethological approach to imitation offers a different perspective. By integrating questions on function, mechanism, development and evolution one can identify possible directions for future research. At present, however, we are still far from developing a comprehensive theory of imitation. A functional approach to imitation shows that, despite some evidence for imitative learning in food processing in apes, such learning has not been shown to be involved in the social transmission of either tool-use skills or communicative signals. Recently developed procedures offer possible ways of clarifying the role of imitation in tool use and visual communication. The role of imitation in explorative play in apes is also investigated and the available data suggest that copying during play might represent a behavioural homologue of human imitation. It is proposed that the ability to copy the behaviour of a companion is under a strong genetic influence in many social species. Many important factors have not been examined experimentally, e.g. the effect of the demonstrator, the influence of attention and memory and the ability to generalize. The potential importance of reinforcement raises the possibility that copying abilities serving divergent functions might be partly under the control of different mechanisms.
长期以来，理论家和实验研究人员一直在争论动物是否能够模仿。人们提出了各种模仿的定义来描述这种复杂的社会学习形式。对模仿的实验研究常常受到过于宽松的“拟人化”方法或过于狭隘的“行为主义”定义的阻碍。目前，联想理论和认知理论都无法对动物的模仿行为做出详尽的解释。一种从动物行为学角度研究模仿的方法提供了不同的视角。通过整合关于功能、机制、发展和进化的问题，可以确定未来研究的可能方向。然而，目前我们距离形成一个全面的模仿理论仍很遥远。一种从功能角度研究模仿的方法表明，尽管有证据表明猿类在食物加工过程中存在模仿学习，但尚未证明这种学习参与了工具使用技能或交流信号的社会传播。最近开发的程序为阐明模仿在工具使用和视觉交流中的作用提供了可能的途径。人们还对模仿在猿类探索性游戏中的作用进行了研究，现有数据表明游戏中的模仿行为可能是人类模仿行为的行为同源物。有人提出，在许多社会物种中，模仿同伴行为的能力受到强大的基因影响。许多重要因素尚未经过实验检验，例如示范者的影响、注意力和记忆力的作用以及概括能力。强化作用的潜在重要性增加了这样一种可能性，即服务于不同功能的模仿能力可能部分受不同机制的控制。
