Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Early Child Development and Culture, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Research Methods in Early Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2020 May;193:104796. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104796. Epub 2020 Jan 25.
Children from Western industrialized populations tend to copy actions modeled by an adult with high fidelity even if these actions are functionally irrelevant. This so-called overimitation has been argued to be an important driver of cumulative cultural learning. However, cross-cultural and developmental evidence on overimitation is controversial, likely due to diverging task demands regarding children's attention and memory capabilities. Here, children from a recent hunter-gatherer population (Hai||om in Namibia) were compared with urban Western children (Germany) using an overimitation procedure with minimal cognitive task demands. Although the proportion of children engaging in any overimitation was similar across the two populations, German overimitators copied irrelevant actions more persistently across tasks. These results suggest that the influence of culture on children's overimitation may be one of degree, not kind.
来自西方工业化人群的儿童往往会高度逼真地模仿成年人的行为，即使这些行为在功能上是无关紧要的。这种所谓的过度模仿被认为是累积文化学习的重要驱动力。然而，关于过度模仿的跨文化和发展证据存在争议，这可能是由于儿童的注意力和记忆能力的任务需求不同。在这里，使用认知任务需求最小的过度模仿程序，比较了纳米比亚的一个最近的狩猎采集人群（Hai||om）的儿童和德国的城市西方儿童。尽管两个群体中参与任何过度模仿的儿童比例相似，但德国的过度模仿者在任务之间更持续地复制无关的动作。这些结果表明，文化对儿童过度模仿的影响可能是程度上的，而不是本质上的。
