Speech imitation is crucial for language acquisition and second-language learning. Interestingly, large individual differences regarding the ability in imitating foreign-language sounds have been observed. The origin of this interindividual diversity remains unknown, although it might be partially explained by structural predispositions. Here we correlated white-matter structural properties of ...

Imitation requires the imitator to solve the correspondence problem--to translate visual information from modelled action into matching motor output. It has been widely accepted for some 30 years that the correspondence problem is solved by a specialized, innate cognitive mechanism. This is the conclusion of a poverty of the stimulus argument, realized in the active intermodal matching model of...

This study evaluated the psychological mechanisms underlying imitation of facial actions in young infants. A novel aspect of the study was that it used a nonoral gesture that had not been tested before (head movement), as well as a tongue-protrusion gesture. Results showed imitation of both displays. Imitation was not limited to the intervals during which the experimenter's movements were displ...

This paper investigates the neural mechanisms of visuo-motor imitation in humans through convergent evidence from neuroscience. In particular, we consider a deficit in imitation following callosal brain lesion, based on the rational that looking at how imitation is impaired can unveil its underlying neural principles. We ground the functional architecture and information flow of our model in br...

Imitation is the ability to recognize and reproduce others’ actions – By extension, imitation learning is a means of learning and developing new skills from observing these skills performed by another agent. Imitation learning as applied to robots is a technique to reduce the complexity of search spaces for learning. When observing either good or bad examples, one can reduce the search for a po...

Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across perceptually and causally dissimilar imitation tasks....

We introduce a generalized theoretical approach to study imitation and subject it to rigorous experimental testing. In our theoretical analysis we …nd that the di¤erent predictions of previous imitation models are due to di¤erent informational assumptions, not to di¤erent behavioral rules. It is more important whom one imitates rather than how. In a laboratory experiment we test the di¤erent th...

Eye contact and pointing are typical gestures in order to direct another individual's attention toward a target. We previously investigated on Japanese monkeys whether joint attention ability encouraged by eye contact and pointing was associated with the imitation of human's actions. The monkeys with the joint attention skills showed the imitation of human's actions. In the current study, we in...

Interactive behavior of biological agents represents an important area in life as we know it. Behavior matching and imitation may serve as fundamental mechanisms for the development of societies and individuals. Imitation and observational learning as means for acquiring new behaviors also represent a largely untapped resource for robotics and artificial life — both in the study of life as it c...

Imitation learning is an effective approach for autonomous systems to acquire control policies when an explicit reward function is unavailable, using supervision provided as demonstrations from an expert, typically a human operator. However, standard imitation learning methods assume that the agent receives examples of observation-action tuples that could be provided, for instance, to a supervi...