A new study of Australian preschoolers and Kalahari Bushman children suggests that overimitation, in which a child copies everything an adult shows them, appears to be a universal human activity, rather than something the children of western middle-class parents pick up. The research, published in Psychological Science, may help shed light on how humans develop and transmit culture.
For the experiments, the children were shown how to open a box – but in a complicated way, with impractical actions thrown in. For example, the adult would drag a stick across a box, then use a stick to open the box by pulling on a knob – which is a lot easier if you just use your fingers. Most of the children copied what the adults did, even if they'd been given the opportunity to play with the box first and figure out how it worked. This was just as true for Bushman children as for the Australian children.
Scientists "have been finding this odd effect where children will copy everything that they see an adult demonstrate to them, even if there are clear or obvious reasons why those actions would be irrelevant," says psychologist Mark Nielsen, of the University of Queensland in Australia. "It's something that we know that other primates don't do." If a chimpanzee is shown an irrelevant action, they won't copy it – they'll skip right to the action that makes something happen.
But aren't the children just following the rules of what appears to be a game? "That kind of is the point," says Nielsen. "Perhaps not a game, but certainly, when I demonstrate the action, it's purposeful. So from the mind of a child, perhaps there's a reason why I'm doing this."
This willingness to assume that an action has some unknown purpose, and to copy it, may be part of how humans develop and share culture. "Really, we see these sorts of behaviors as being a core part of developing this human cultural mind, where we're so motivated to do things like those around us and be like those around us."
