Imitation enables the individuals to acquire new abilities, and encourages social interaction and cultural transfer. The capability to obtain new abilities by observation represents many important advantages. Although imitation intends to equip robots with social skills, most of the approaches so far only focus on the development of a mechanism to imitate, and other issues that contribute to th...

Imitation plays a very important role in human cognition. Because previous neuroimaging studies on human imitation used rather simple actions as target stimuli, some aspects of imitation such as perceiving target actions or manipulating one's own mental image could not be studied. We used complicated non-symbolic (S-) and symbolic (S+) finger configurations as target stimuli in order to study t...

We build a quality ladders product cycle model with Northern innovation, Northern imitation, and Southern imitation. Our model generalizes Grossman and Helpman (1991a) to allow Northern imitation. Similar to Segerstrom (1991), successful Northern imitators collude with innovators. Changes in resources and R&D subsidies generate substitution in Northern R&D between innovation and imitation and s...

ROLES OF IMITATION IN DEVELOPMENT 279 Types of Copying Behaviors and Tasks to Assess Them 279 IMITATION IN ASD: FINDINGS 281 Frequency of Spontaneous Imitation 281 Accuracy of Elicited Imitation 282 Older Children, Adolescents, and Adults 282 THEORIES OF IMITATION 285 Theories of Poor Visual Encoding 287 Theories of Failed Direct Self–Other Mapping 288 Theories of Abnormal Motor and Sensory-Mot...

Once a new technology has been invented, there is a credible threat of imitation when patent protection is strong and imitation cost is low. Within the area of credible imitation, the innovator has an incentive to postpone technology adoption when the cost of imitation is relatively high. The possibility of licensing, however, eliminates or at least reduces the incentive for delayed technology ...

Imitation is an important constituent of the behavioral repertoire of human beings. We use imitation for learning motor skills, for facilitating comprehension of other persons' actions and mental states, and as a communicative reference to actions or people. Although some non-human species display imitative behaviors, none of them equals the versatility and perfection of human imitation. The ve...

Neonatal imitation has rich implications for neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social cognition, but there is little consensus about this phenomenon. The primary empirical question, whether or not neonatal imitation exists, is not settled. Is it possible to give a balanced evaluation of the theories and methodologies at stake so as to facilitate real progress with respect to the prima...

Recent evidence suggests that individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) are impaired in their ability to imitate gestures and movements generated by others. This impairment in imitation may be linked to difficulties in generating and maintaining internal representations in working memory (WM). We used a novel quantitative technique to investigate the relationship between WM and imitation ability. SZ ...