| dbo:abstract
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- Cognitive imitation is a form of social learning, and a subtype of imitation. Cognitive imitation, is contrasted with motor and vocal or oral imitation. As with all forms of imitation, cognitive imitation involves learning and copying specific rules or responses done by another. The principal difference between motor and cognitive imitation is the type of rule (and stimulus) that is learned and copied by the observer. So, whereas in the typical imitation learning experiment subjects must copy novel actions on objects or novel sequences of specific actions (novel motor imitation), in a novel cognitive imitation paradigm subjects have to copy novel rules, independently of specific actions or movement patterns. The following example illustrates the difference between cognitive and motor-spatial imitation: Imagine someone overlooking someone's shoulder and stealing their automated teller machine (ATM) password. As with all forms of imitation, the individual learns and successfully reproduces the observed sequence. The observer in our example, like most of us, presumably knows how to operate an ATM (namely, that you have to push X number of buttons on the ATM screen in a specific sequence), so the specific motor responses of touching the screen isn't what the thief is learning. Instead, the thief could learn two types of abstract rules. On the one hand, the thief can learn a spatial rule: touch item in the top right, followed by item on the top left, then the item in the middle of the screen, and finally the one on lower right. This would be an example of motor-spatial imitation because the thief's response is guided by an abstract motor-spatial rule. On the other, the thief could ignore the spatial patterning of the observed responses and instead focus on the particular items that were touched, generating an abstract numerical rule, independently of where they are in space: 3-1-5-9. This would constitute an example of cognitive imitation because the individuals is copying an abstract serial rule without copying specific motor-responses. In this example, the thief's responses match those he observed only because the numbers are in the same location. If the numbers were in a different location—that is, if the numbers on the ATM's keypad were scrambled with every attempt to enter a password—the thief would, nonetheless, reproduce the target password because they learned a cognitive (i.e., an abstract, item-specific serial rule), rather than a spatial rule (i.e., an observable motor-spatial pattern). (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- Cognitive imitation is a form of social learning, and a subtype of imitation. Cognitive imitation, is contrasted with motor and vocal or oral imitation. As with all forms of imitation, cognitive imitation involves learning and copying specific rules or responses done by another. The principal difference between motor and cognitive imitation is the type of rule (and stimulus) that is learned and copied by the observer. So, whereas in the typical imitation learning experiment subjects must copy novel actions on objects or novel sequences of specific actions (novel motor imitation), in a novel cognitive imitation paradigm subjects have to copy novel rules, independently of specific actions or movement patterns. (en)
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