Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom.
Dev Psychol. 2011 May;47(3):834-40. doi: 10.1037/a0023270.
When copying a model's behavior with a tool, children tend to imitate (copy the specific actions to replicate the model's goal) rather than emulate (bring about the model's goal in the most efficient way). Tasks producing these findings test children immediately after the behavior is modeled. In 2 experiments, we investigated children's copying behavior after a delay (of a week). In Experiment 1 (n = 90), we found that although 3- and 4-year-olds often imitate in the short term, they are more likely to emulate in the long term. Data from Experiment 2 (n = 80) were consistent with children remembering actions that were relevant to a causal narrative of the task. Overall, our data suggest that children simultaneously encode modeled behavior in 2 ways that lead to both imitation and emulation. In the discussion, we consider what kind of information leads children to emulate in the long term.
当儿童使用工具复制模型的行为时，他们倾向于模仿（复制特定的动作以再现模型的目标）而不是效仿（以最有效的方式实现模型的目标）。产生这些发现的任务在行为被建模后立即测试儿童。在 2 项实验中，我们在延迟（一周）后研究了儿童的复制行为。在实验 1（n = 90）中，我们发现，尽管 3 岁和 4 岁的儿童在短期内经常模仿，但他们在长期内更有可能效仿。实验 2（n = 80）的数据与儿童对任务因果叙事相关的动作的记忆一致。总的来说，我们的数据表明，儿童以两种方式同时对模型行为进行编码，这导致了模仿和效仿。在讨论中，我们考虑了什么样的信息会导致儿童在长期内效仿。
