Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, PO Box 5010, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2010 Jan;46(1):57-65. doi: 10.1037/a0017473.
Two experiments were used to investigate the scope of imitation by testing whether 36-month-olds can learn to produce a categorization strategy through observation. After witnessing an adult sort a set of objects by a visible property (their color; Experiment 1) or a nonvisible property (the particular sounds produced when the objects were shaken; Experiment 2), children showed significantly more sorting by those dimensions relative to children in control groups, including a control in which children saw the sorted endstate but not the intentional sorting demonstration. The results show that 36-month-olds can do more than imitate the literal behaviors they see; they also abstract and imitate rules that they see another person use.
两项实验通过测试 36 个月大的婴儿是否可以通过观察学会使用分类策略，来探究模仿的范围。在观察到成人根据可见属性（物体的颜色；实验 1）或不可见属性（摇晃物体时产生的特殊声音；实验 2）对一组物体进行分类后，儿童在分类时更倾向于使用这些维度，这明显优于控制组的儿童，包括一个仅观察到分类结果但未观察到有意分类演示的控制组。研究结果表明，36 个月大的婴儿不仅可以模仿他们看到的具体行为，还可以抽象和模仿他们看到的其他人使用的规则。
