关键词: 模仿, 效率, 忠实, 学习机制

Abstract:

Imitation is an important learning mechanism. However, do preschool children emphasize efficiency and copy actions selectively, or emphasize fidelity and copy indiscriminately? This debate on preschool children’s imitation is becoming a key question among developmental psychologists, comparative psychologists, and evolutionary anthropologists in the last 10 years. Some researchers proposed the automatic causal encoding hypothesis and the intention misunderstanding hypothesis based on how preschool children reason causal relations. Other researchers proposed the social affiliation hypothesis and the natural pedagogical hypothesis according to how preschool children communicate with others socially. To date, no one hypothesis has been able to explain all the evidence. To understand this debate from a new perspective, the “benefit-and-loss trading” hypothesis was proposed, which states that preschool children copy other’s actions by trading the benefit and loss.

Key words: imitation, efficiency, fidelity, learning mechanism