Imitation 3 4

6 Imitation—the ability to recognize and reproduce others’ actions— 7 is a powerful means of learning and developing new skills. Species 8 endowed with this capability are provided with fundamental abil9 ities for social learning. In its most complex form, imitation pro10 vides fundamental capabilities for social cognition, such as the rec11 ognition of conspecifics, the attribution of others’ intentions, and 12 the ability to deceive and to manipulate others’ states of mind. 13 Improved understanding of animals’ ability to imitate can contrib14 ute to both biological and engineering sciences. 15 Research on imitation builds a bridge between biology and en16 gineering, and between the study and use of imitation. Biology 17 seeks to better understand the cognitive and neural processes be18 hind the different forms of animal imitation, and how these relate 19 to the evolution of social cognition. Engineering uses studies of 20 the biological processes of human imitation to design robot con21 trollers and computational algorithms enabling learning and imi22 tative skills similar in robustness and flexibility to human skills. 23 There are three major levels of modeling. Theoretical modeling 24 derives models of the cognitive mechanisms behind imitation based 25 on behavioral studies of humans’ and other animals’ imitation. 26 Computational modeling builds models of the neural mechanisms, 27 and their brain correlates, behind imitation learning in human and 28 other animals. Robotics modeling designs algorithms for imitation 29 learning, implementable in hardware systems, that allow a robot to 30 be taught by demonstration.