The role of social motivations for the imitation of non-functional actions in preschoolers

• Applicant: Professorin Stefanie Höhl, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 272519083

Children and adults tend to faithfully imitate actions that are functionally irrelevant to accomplish a certain aim. The imitation of non-functional, inefficient actions has been termed overimitation. There is currently much debate about why overimitation occurs. On the one hand, it has been argued that children may automatically encode observed actions as causally relevant and therefore reproduce them (automatic causal encoding, ACE). Others have argued that social motivations, namely social norm learning and/or the desire to affiliate with the model underlie the phenomenon of overimitation. In the proposed project, we will test the validity of social accounts (i.e., norm learning/ social affiliation) as compared to a more cognitive account of overimitation (i.e., ACE) by applying a paradigm that we have recently introduced in our previous research with preschoolers.In Study 1, we will test whether children will switch to an inefficient strategy after already having learned the efficient method to achieve a goal. This finding would speak to the ability of children to flexibly learn different action strategies socially even though the functional irrelevance of certain actions is transparent to them.In Study 2, we will test whether affiliation with a social group enhances the imitation of non-functional actions modeled by in-group members. If overimitation reflects a mechanism for cultural knowledge transmission, children should imitate functionally irrelevant actions more if a member of their own social group as compared to an out-group member models these actions.In Study 3, we will investigate whether the desire to affiliate with an individual or not affects overimitation. In a pre-test phase, one model will victimize a third person, thus violating moral norms that preschoolers are already sensitive to. The second model will help the victim. This should lead to a higher motivation in children to affiliate with the prosocial model as compared to the perpetrator.Together, the results of the current project will provide novel insights on the influence of social motivations to affiliate with a group and/ or individuals on the imitation of non-functional actions in children. This will inform current theoretical debates about the social and cognitive bases of overimitation as a potential mechanism for cultural knowledge transmission.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Sabina Pauen