Sebastianutto Linda, Mengotti Paola, Spiezio Caterina, Rumiati Raffaella Ida, Balaban Evan
Area of Neuroscience, SISSA, Trieste, Italy.
Area of Neuroscience, SISSA, Trieste, Italy.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2017 Feb;173:94-100. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.12.007. Epub 2016 Dec 23.
Imitation can be realized via two different routes: a direct route that translates visual input into motor output when gestures are meaningless or unknown, and a semantic route for known/meaningful gestures. Young infants show imitative behaviours compatible with the direct route, but little is known about the development of the semantic route, studied here for the first time. The present study examined preschool children (3-5years of age) imitating gestures that could be transitive or intransitive, and meaningful or meaningless. Both routes for imitation were already present by three years of age, and children were more accurate at imitating meaningful-intransitive gestures than meaningless-intransitive ones; the reverse pattern was found for transitive gestures. Children preferred to use their dominant hand even if they had to anatomically imitate the model to do this, showing that a preference for specular imitation is not exclusive at these ages.
一种是直接途径，当手势无意义或不为人所知时，将视觉输入转化为运动输出；另一种是针对已知/有意义手势的语义途径。年幼的婴儿表现出与直接途径相符的模仿行为，但对于语义途径的发展却知之甚少，本文首次对此进行了研究。本研究考察了3至5岁的学龄前儿童对手势的模仿，这些手势可以是及物的或不及物的，有意义的或无意义的。到三岁时，两种模仿途径都已出现，并且儿童在模仿有意义的不及物手势时比无意义的不及物手势更准确；而对于及物手势则发现了相反的模式。即使必须从解剖学角度模仿模型，儿童也更喜欢使用其优势手，这表明在这些年龄段，对镜面模仿的偏好并非唯一。
