To copy or not to copy: Comparing selective social learning and overimitation in childhood

Even young children use social learning, or the ability to learn from others’ actions, to make sense of the world. Two social learning strategies that both develop rapidly during the preschool period are selective social learning and overimitation. Previous research suggests that different mechanisms might underlie these skills, namely theory of mind and social affiliation, respectively. To our knowledge, no study has compared performance on these two abilities. We hypothesized that these abilities would be associated, but that this association would decrease with age; that performance on the selective social learning task would be more strongly related to theory of mind; and that overimitation would be more strongly related to social affiliation. To test these predictions, we conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, we administered a selective word learning task and an overimitation task with puppets via video-chat to a sample of 3.5- and 5-year-old children. Parents filled out questionnaires measuring cognitive and social abilities. Correlation and regression analyses revealed no association between the two tasks, nor between task performance and scores on the questionnaires. As the overimitation rate was very low, we conducted a second experiment using the same procedures, but with human agents, with a sample of 5-year-old children. Results showed an association between selective social learning and theory of mind, in line with our second hypothesis. Most children also copied the irrelevant actions, suggesting that overimitation might indeed be related to social affiliation, as our participants more frequently imitated a human agent compared to a puppet agent