Children with autism exhibit deficits in the imitation and spontaneous use of descriptive gestures. Reciprocal Imitation Training (RIT), a naturalistic imitation intervention, has ben shown to increase object imitation skills in young children with autism. A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across five young children with autism was used to determine whether RIT could be adapted to targ...

The social significance of imitation is that it provides internal tools for understanding the actions of others by simulating or forming internal representations of these actions. Imitation plays a central role in human social behavior by mediating diverse forms of social learning. However, imitation and simulation ability in schizophrenia has not been adequately addressed. The major aim of the...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy, speed and subjective ease of imitation of movement using three different imitation models. [Subjects] Thirty-four right-handed healthy males participated in this study. [Methods] The imitation task chosen for this study was an asymmetric combined motion of the upper and lower limbs. Three kinds of imitation models were displayed o...

This paper develops a growth model aimed at understanding the potential effects of globalization of production on rate of innovation, distribution of skilled labor income between the North and South, and welfare of skilled workers in both regions. We adopt a dynamic general equilibrium productcycle model, assuming that the North specializes in innovation and the South specializes in imitation. ...

We propose that the option to maintain or to quit relationships can enforce cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma between boundedly-rational agents in a large population if players imitate successful behavior and sometimes choose to experiment. Agents do not have the ability to follow history-dependent strategies, but have access to information about what behavior is on average the most success...

"Automatic imitation" is a type of stimulus-response compatibility effect in which the topographical features of task-irrelevant action stimuli facilitate similar, and interfere with dissimilar, responses. This article reviews behavioral, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging research on automatic imitation, asking in what sense it is "automatic" and whether it is "imitation." This body of resea...

Automatic imitation is a cornerstone of nonverbal communication that fosters rapport between interaction partners. Recent research has suggested that stable dimensions of personality are antecedents to automatic imitation, but the empirical evidence linking imitation with personality traits is restricted to a few studies with modest sample sizes. Additionally, atypical imitation has been docume...

BACKGROUND Phenomena of instability are widely observed in many dissimilar systems, with punctuated equilibrium in biological evolution and economic crises being noticeable examples. Recent studies suggested that such instabilities, quantified by the abrupt changes of the composition of individuals, could result within the framework of a collection of individuals interacting through the prisone...

Imitation is a common way of acquiring novel behaviors in toddlers. However, little is known about toddlers' imitation of undesired actions. Here we investigated 18- and 24-month-olds' (N=110) imitation of undesired and allowed actions from televised peer and adult models. Permissiveness of the demonstrated actions was indicated by the experimenter's response to their execution (angry or neutra...

Imitation is a powerful form of learning used in many animal societies. Imitation encourages the social interaction and the cultural transfer. Hence, Imitation represents many advantages, which have inspired the roboticists to reach imitation in order to approach social intelligent social intelligent robotics systems. The paper presents a mechanism of imitation, which permits a robot to acquire...