ABSTRACT

The development and analysis of the imitative behavior of children has been the topic of a great deal of research in recent years, primarily because of the pivotal role that imitation plays in theoretical accounts of the behavioral development of children. In several early studies of the development of imitation, training techniques involving reinforcement procedures were used to teach imitative behavior to children who were initially nonimitative (Metz, 1965; Lovaas, Berberich, Perloff, & Schaeffer, 1966; Baer, Peterson, & Sherman, 1967). In these studies it was found that after some imitative behavior had been taught to the children, new imitative responses could be produced and maintained simply by demonstrating those responses without direct training or use of reinforcement. These results, the occurrence and maintenance of unreinforced imitation, have been labeled “generalized” imitation and have occasioned a number of studies designed to investigate the conditions responsible for the phenomena.