Tomasello/imitation

Patricia Zukow-Goldring (zukow who-is-at ucla.edu)
Fri, 29 Aug 1997 07:48:35 -0700

>Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 00:20:39
>To: XMCA
>From: Patricia Zukow-Goldring <zukow who-is-at ucla.edu>
>Subject: Tomasello/imitation
>
>Hello Everyone, especially Eva, Eugene, Ana, Jay, & Graham,
>
>I've dipped into the discussions infrequently this year and caught the tail
end of the discussion of Tomasello's emulation-imitation distinction.
>
>In the following, I touch on some of MikeT's definitions regarding what
children and apes "know." Then I give an overview of my take on the origins
of imitation. The caregiver practices that I have documented occur at home,
at school, and, I suggest, most anywhere that people learn something new or
there are differences in view/knowing.
>
>MikeT's work, although he acknowledges that learning occurs in a social
world, focuses almost exclusively on what the individual knows and does and
not on what caregivers contribute. (Sort of a focus on Piagetian
assimilation that ignores the accommodation that led to changes in schemas.)
In this view, the proof of the pudding/knowledge is in the
eating/internalizing not in the cooking/process of coming to know. Most such
work measures what children know at T1, T2, and so on. Researchers document
change from one age to another; that is, development occurs. That knowledge
is most often measured by making verbal accounts of one kind or another,
rather than flexibility in practice. Models are imagined that account for
these changes. However, little work looks at the mundane daily activities
that actually propagate development nor those individuals who provide the
conditions for growth.
>
>Naturalistic longitudinal data of infants confirms that the developmental
story is quite a bit more complex. I agree with Eugene M. that imitation
grows in and through methods/practices that emerge during interaction in a
manner, however, somewhat different from Fogel's notion of co-regulation. My
approach focuses on how caregivers educate attention so infants come to
perceive, act in, and know cultural practices/methods, so that they might
become adept members of their culture. Infants just don't imitate daily
activities spontaneously, "personal trainers" embody, show, demonstrate,
point at what to do day-in and day-out.
> Despite conclusions by Ochs & Schieffelin and Rogoff regarding non-Western
adult caregivers' very different interactional patterns with children than
that of Western adult caregivers, sibling caregivers around the world (who
do must of moment-to-moment work) do carefully monitor and educate attention
unceasingly (Demuth, Martini, Zukow-Goldring).
>
>Most developmental theories (whether assuming that knowledge is innate or
acquired) presuppose that knowing is in the individual, not emergent,
distributed, etc. I take a different tack. I assume that we all have
different (perceptual) histories and approach what's happening as we move
along different trajectories/paths and occupy different observing points as
events unfold. People do not see eye-to-eye. Life is inherently ambiguous.
We spend much time and effort negotiating a rather tenuous, fragile
practical consensus just to get ordinary and esoteric things done.
>
>
>_Tomasello's emulation-imitation distinction (Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner,
1993, _Behavioral & Brain Sciences_).
> _matching_ is earliest imitative behavior, such as an infant sticking out
her/his tongue after the caregiver does so (Meltzoff's work). These are not
new behaviors, but part of the infant's earliest action repertoire.
> _emulation_ according to MikeT, emulating is a process through which the
infant learns what the world affords for action from watching another, such
as opening a jar. The child already has behavior (motor pattern?) that may
get jar open, but does not do the act with same precision as the "expert."
Or the child may twist the lid without applying pressure--going through the
motions without understanding the (social/cultural) meaning of the activity.
> Much of what MikeT discussed had to do with chimps not producing
particular behaviors with a high degree of fidelity. He did not consider
just how the chimps' bodies differ from ours and how they might accommodate.
T seemed to want stimulus equivalence rather than functional equivalence.
Sometimes chimps seemed to have their own agenda...were "creative." They
seem to see and/or prefer rather different opportunities for action than
humans.
> _ (true) imitation_ child acquires/internalizes some practice relatively
faithfully (in some mental plan/schema, etc). Child can apply practice to
new situation.
> MikeT emphasizes that child (rather than chimp) can extract what and how
to act from watching others because child understands that caregiver is an
intentional agent. Given the child understands what the caregiver perceives
and intends, the child can reproduce a behavior.
>
>The B&BS article has excellent commentaries. Many scholars objected to MT's
interpretation of the chimp literature. Apparently there is evidence that
chimps in the wild do some "teaching." Not all learning is a serendipitous
noticing of affordances for action, but is guided some of the time.
>
>_It ain't that easy/there's a gap/had had that stuff get in the child?_. So
are _emulations_ crude approximations, different activities?? How does the
infant get from _emulation_ to _imitation_? Need we posit understanding
intentional agency to get from here to there?
> Although T discusses/describes what the social context may offer the
child, he pretty much presupposes a Piagetian child who helps her/himself to
a best diet from the cafeteria of life. Given a Vygotskian upbringing, I
suggest that life is a catered affair with caregivers carefully adjusting
the child's developmental regimen "on demand."
>
>_Lemke's "rickety" scaffold seems pretty solid to me_. My work is informed
by ecological realism/direct perception (Gibson), ethnomethodology
(Garfinkel), and the ZPD (Vygotsky). Infants do not come into the world
empty-handed/blank slates. They arrive with some preattunements, but they
are cultural blank slates. Caregivers educate these natural abilities,
assist in their differentiation. I look at member's methods/practices for
achieving a practical understanding of ongoing events. I focus on caregivers
educating their infants' attention to mundane daily activities, especially
as they propagate the emergence of the lexicon.
>
> _Mundane daily activities_. Caregivers spend a great deal of time
educating infant's to notice/perceive objects, persons, trajectories, the
capabilities of their own bodies in relation to objects/animate beings, what
animate beings/objects offer for action. PERCEIVING. For example, in
learning soccer a Latino mother spent massive amounts of time showing her
infant from 6 months onward first the ball itself, then a ball's trajectory
(tossing to someone else, tossing up/down, rolling on the floor, spinning a
ball across the floor, and so on) until he followed those movements easily.
> EMBODYING. At 7/8 months she held him by the shoulders, swinging him like
a pendulum so his feet contacted a ball rolled to him. Then she propped him
in front of her knees and cocked and kicked his leg. Through this embodied
practice, he perceived the relation of his body's momentum, the
configuration of ball and boy, the articulation of his leg for kicking, and
what the ball afforded for action. Later, when B. walked his mother held him
by two hands and, as he became more competent, by one hand as he walked and
kicked. [The caregiver embodies the child, so the child can perceive
new/unfamiliar capabilities of the body.]
> SHOWING. Many times the mother and others simply gathered B's attention
and then acted on the ball in new ways. [The ways of using the body were
familiar, the opportunities/affordances for action with ball were new.]
> DEMONSTRATIONS (invitations to imitate). During the second year, the
mother sometimes demonstrated drop kicking the ball, then gave him an
opportunity to try. Later, she also demonstrated kicking near the instep as
adept players do. If he could't, she would move his leg/foot so he would get
the feel for doing so. [In these sequences, the child can monitor the
caregiver enacting familiar capabilities/effectivities of the body and
affordances of the environment for perceiving-and-acting.]
>
> This mother also demonstrated the relation between bodily capability and
what the ball afforded for action, in the sense that kicking with the toe
has one kind of effect whereas kicking with the instep affords more control
of the ball. He could drop kick by 25 months and corrected others' style by
39 months!
>
> In the main, in the latter part of the first year of life, caregivers
direct attention to noticing/perceiving the organization and structure of
culturally relevant events. Caregivers provide infants with practice in
these events by embodying them, putting them through the motions so they can
perceive (feel/see/hear, etc.) their own bodies and what the environment
offers for action. In the second year, the infants spontaneously monitor the
caregiver much more continuously. Given familiar capabilities of the body
and new opportunities for action, infants can often imitate the caregiver
following a demonstration.
>
>Imitation does not spring into being fully formed without enormous amounts
of practice carefully tailored to the developing infant. Autonomous,
spontaneously imitation follows a great deal of cultivation.
>
> _Message ambiguity_. When communication breaks down, and it often does,
caregivers spend more time getting the infants to perceive what's going on
(perceiving, acting, & knowing the activity) and much less on revising or
making linguistic messages more specific. (You have to know what's
happening, before you can relate language to events. If you say things in
words to infants who don't know what's going on nor that words mean, you are
not going to communicate effectively.) Caregivers direct attention to what
to perceive (objects, animate beings, etc.), what bodily movements relate to
the activity, what the other actors, objects, landscape affords for action.
If a caregiver starts with a verbal message or a point to guide an infant in
the latter part of the first year, that message rarely receives a response
that satisfies the caregiver. Caregivers re-view those messages, following
up with demonstrations of what to do. If that does't work, the caregiver
will eventually embody the child (put the child through the motions). These
methods occur in preschool and kindergarten classrooms as well.
>
>*As for Lemke's point a) in his 8/17 message, I suggest that caregivers
assist infants to detect amodal regularities/invariants relations (timing,
tempo, intensity, rhythmicity) in affect, gesture, and speech. These routine
relations between inner experience, "world," and word may constitute
perceiving identity at a general level. Infants come to pick-up these
regularities in their caregivers' action and speech.
>
>Cites available on request. (Zukow, 1990; Zukow-Goldring, Romo, & Duncan,
1994; Zukow-Goldring & Ferko, 1994; Zukow-Goldring, 1995, 1996, 1997).
>
>Pat
>
>
Patricia Zukow-Goldring, Ph. D.
Research Scholar
University of California, Los Angeles
Center for the Study of Women Mailing address: 3835 Ventura Canyon Ave.
276 Kinsey Hall Sherman Oaks CA 91423
405 Hilgard Avenue email: zukow who-is-at ucla.edu
Los Angeles CA 90095-1504 phone: (818) 905-6293