BACKGROUND Motor imitation is truly essential for young children to learn new motor skills, social behavior and skilled acts or praxis. The present study aimed to investigate motor imitation ability between typically-developing children and dyspraxic children and to examine the development trends in both children groups. MATERIAL AND METHOD The comparison ofmotor imitation was studied in 55 t...

Research on imitation in infancy has primarily focused on what and when infants imitate. More recently, however, the question why infants imitate has received renewed attention, partly motivated by the finding that infants sometimes selectively imitate the actions of others and sometimes faithfully imitate, or overimitate, the actions of others. The present study evaluates the hypothesis that t...

Recent advances in our knowledge of the neural mechanisms of imitation suggest that there is a core circuitry of imitation comprising the superior temporal sulcus and the 'mirror neuron system', which consists of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent ventral premotor cortex, as well as the rostral inferior parietal lobule. This core circuitry communicates with other neural systems a...

We developed an assistive robot for children with autism in order to enhance their primal imitation skills. Our approach directed toward encouraging autistic children to engage in physical exercise during a morning gathering through imitating an embedded robotic system. Through these interaction scenarios we attempt to heighten the children’s imitation skills through a music-embedded imitation ...

We review a series of behavioural experiments on imitation in children and adults that test the predictions of a new theory of imitation. Most of the recent theories of imitation assume a direct visual-to-motor mapping between perceived and imitated movements. Based on our findings of systematic errors in imitation, the new theory of goal-directed imitation (GOADI) instead assumes that imitatio...

Imitation of the successful choices of others is a simple and superficially attractive learning rule. It has been shown to be an important driving force for the strategic behavior of (young) adults. In this study we examine whether imitation is prevalent in the behavior of children aged between 8 and 10. Surprisingly, we find that imitation seems to be cognitively demanding. Most children in th...

Imitation is an essential skill in the acquisition of language and communication skills. An initial phase in teaching young children with autism to engage in appropriate affective responding may be to teach the imitation of facial models. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, imitation training (consisting of modeling, prompting, differential reinforcement, and error correction)...

Learning by imitation is an essential process in human cognition. Recently, imitation learning has also become important in robotics research. We address the problem of learning by imitation in interactive, robotic agents using case-based reasoning. We describe two tasks for which case-based reasoning may be used: (i) interpretation, in which the robot interprets new skill demonstrations as bei...

BACKGROUND The present study sought to examine the specificity, developmental correlates, nature and pervasiveness of imitation deficits very early in the development of autism. METHODS Subjects were 24 children with autism (mean age 34 months), 18 children with fragile X syndrome, 20 children with other developmental disorders, and 15 typically-developing children. Tasks included manual, ora...