Heimann Mikael, Meltzoff Andrew N
Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Haraldsgatan 1, S-413 14, Göteborg, Sweden.
Department of Psychology (WJ-10), University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Br J Dev Psychol. 1996 Mar;14(1):55-64. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-835X.1996.tb00693.x.
This study investigated deferred imitation using a longitudinal design. A total of 62 Swedish children (32 girls) were tested at both 9 and 14 months of age. The memory delay interval was 10 minutes at 9 months and five minutes at 14 months of age. At both ages children in the imitation group displayed significantly more target actions after modelling than the children in the control group, thus replicating earlier reports of imitation from memory. It was found that individual children with a tendency to perform low deferred imitation at 9 months of age tended to remain low on the test at 14 months, thus raising the possibility of stable individual differences in imitation. This study provides a first investigation of deferred imitation longitudinally among young children, and supports recent theoretical claims that deferred imitation arises earlier in ontogeny than was hypothesized by classical theory. It was observed that there are cultural differences in the way that Swedish versus American adult-infant pairs act in the test situation and ideas are offered regarding the roots of such differences.
本研究采用纵向设计对延迟模仿进行了调查。共有62名瑞典儿童（32名女孩）在9个月和14个月大时接受了测试。9个月大时记忆延迟间隔为10分钟，14个月大时为5分钟。在两个年龄段，模仿组的儿童在示范后表现出的目标动作都明显多于对照组的儿童，从而重复了早期关于记忆模仿的报告。研究发现，9个月大时倾向于表现出低延迟模仿的个体儿童在14个月大的测试中往往仍然表现较低，因此增加了模仿中个体差异稳定存在的可能性。本研究首次对幼儿的延迟模仿进行了纵向调查，并支持了最近的理论观点，即延迟模仿在个体发育中出现的时间比经典理论假设的要早。研究观察到，瑞典和美国的成人与婴儿对在测试情境中的行为方式存在文化差异，并对这种差异的根源提出了看法。
