Learning by imitation: a hierarchical approach
by Richard W. Byrne and Anne E. Russon
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL to:
bbs who-is-at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
or write to:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators
are eligible to become BBS Associates.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________
LEARNING BY IMITATION: A HIERARCHICAL APPROACH
Richard W Byrne
Scottish Primate Research Group
School of Psychology
University of St Andrews
Fife KY16 9JU
SCOTLAND
rwb who-is-at st-andrews.ac.uk
Anne E Russon
Department of Psychology
Glendon College, York University
2275 Bayview Avenue
Toronto M4N 3M6
CANADA
gl250035 who-is-at venus.yorku.ca
KEYWORDS: imitation, priming, emulation, hierarchical
organization, great apes
ABSTRACT: To explain social learning without invoking the
cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning
mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used
routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of
these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process,
priming, in which input increases the activation of stored
internal representations. Imitation itself has generally
been seen as a "special faculty". This has diverted much
research towards the all-or-none question of whether an
animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive
results. In the great apes, however, voluntary, learned
behaviour is hierarchically organized. This means that
imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single
out two clearly distinct ones: the "action level", a rather
detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and
the "program level", a broader description of subroutine
structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural
"program". Program level imitation is a high-level,
constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning
of complex skills and thus not very evident in the simple
manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory.
As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of
wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of
orangutans undergoing "rehabilitation" to the wild.
Representing and manipulating relations between objects
seems to be one basic building-block in their hierarchical
programs. There is evidence that nonhuman great apes suffer
from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the
hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some
chimpanzee behaviour previously described as "emulation" and
suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the
program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in
great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social
role, even in humans.
--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.byrne.html
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.byrne
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.byrne
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals