Meltzoff A N
Department of Psychology University of Washington Seattle Washington 98195 USA.
Hum Evol. 1988 Feb 1;3(1-2):45-64. doi: 10.1007/BF02436590.
Human beings are imitative generalists. We can immediately imitate a wide range of behaviors with great facility, whether they be vocal maneuvers, body postures, or actions on objects. The ontogeny of this skill has been an enduring question in developmental psychology. Classical theory holds that the ability to imitate facial gestures is a milestone that is passed at about one year. Before this time infants are thought to lack the perceptual-cognitive sophistication necessary to match a gesture they can see with one they cannot see themselves perform. A second developmental milestone is the capacity for deferred imitation, i.e. imitation of an absent model. This is said to emerge at about 18 months, in close synchrony with other higher-order activities such as object permanence and tool use, as part of a general cognitive shift from a purely sensory-motor level of functioning to one that allows language. Research suggests that the imitative capacity of young infants has been underestimated. Human infants are capable of imitating facial gestures at birth, with infants less than one day old manifesting this skill. Moreover recent experiments have established deferred imitation well before the predicted age of 18 months. Studies discussed here show that 9-month-olds can duplicate acts after a delay of 24 hours, and that 14-month-olds can retain and duplicate as many as five actions over a 1-week delay. These new findings re-raise questions about the relation between nonverbal cognitive development and language development: What aspects, if any, of these two domains are linked? A hypothesis is delineated that predicts certain very specific relations between particular cognitive and semantic achievements during the one-word stage, and data are reported supporting this hypothesis. Specifically, relations are reported between: (a) the development of object permanence and the use of words encoding disappearance, (b) means-ends understanding (as manifest in tool use) and words encoding success and failure, and (c) categorization behavior and the onset of the naming explosion. This research on human ontogeny suggests close and highly specific links between aspects of early language and thought.
人类是善于模仿的通才。我们能够轻松且迅速地模仿各种各样的行为，无论是发声技巧、身体姿势还是对物体的操作。这种技能的个体发生发展一直是发展心理学中一个长期存在的问题。经典理论认为，模仿面部手势的能力是一个大约在一岁时达成的里程碑。在此之前，婴儿被认为缺乏将他们看到的手势与自己无法看到的自身执行的手势相匹配所需的感知认知复杂性。第二个发展里程碑是延迟模仿能力，即对不在场模型的模仿。据说这种能力大约在18个月时出现，与物体恒存和工具使用等其他高阶活动密切同步，是从纯粹的感觉运动功能水平向允许语言发展的一般认知转变的一部分。研究表明，幼儿的模仿能力一直被低估。人类婴儿在出生时就能够模仿面部手势，出生不到一天的婴儿就表现出这种技能。此外，最近的实验表明延迟模仿早在预测的18个月之前就已出现。这里讨论的研究表明，9个月大的婴儿在延迟24小时后能够重复动作，14个月大的婴儿在延迟1周后能够记住并重复多达五个动作。这些新发现再次引发了关于非语言认知发展与语言发展之间关系的问题：这两个领域的哪些方面（如果有的话）是相关联的？提出了一个假设，该假设预测了单词阶段特定认知和语义成就之间某些非常具体的关系，并报告了支持该假设的数据。具体而言，报告了以下方面之间的关系：（a）物体恒存的发展与表示消失的单词的使用，（b）手段 - 目的理解（如在工具使用中体现）与表示成功和失败的单词，以及（c）分类行为与命名爆发的开始。这项关于人类个体发生发展的研究表明，早期语言和思维的各个方面之间存在紧密且高度特定的联系。
