Post on 04-Apr-2018
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Two systems for reasoning,
two systems for learning
Harriet Over and Merideth Gattis
School of Psychology, Cardiff University
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Social learning
Trial error
Efficient learning
Imitation
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Research questions
What is the relationship between action
imitation and vocal imitation?
What can this tell us about the cognitive
mechanisms behind imitation?
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Insights from action imitation
Childrens imitation of actions is related to
their understanding of a models goals
Children copy intentional but not
accidental actions (Carpenter, Akhtar &Tomasello,1998; Sakkalou & Gattis)
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Two systems for copying actions
Perceptual form
of behaviour
Knowledge of
intentions
Imitation
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2 systems for copying actions
Perceptual form
of behaviour
Knowledge ofintentions
Mimicry
Manipulate mental state information
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Carpenter, Call and Tomasello (2002)
2-year-old infants were shown a
demonstration of how to remove a pin, and
then open the lid of a box
Prior intentions
Style
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Carpenter, Call and Tomasello (2005)
12- and 18-month-old infants
Style
Objects
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Conclusions
Imitation reproduce goal
Mimicry reproduceirrelevant features
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Vocal Imitation
How similar are vocal and action imitation?
Assumed vocal copying is mimicry (taken from BritishLibrary sound archive)
Intention understanding?
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Experiment 1: vocal imitation and
mimicry
Aims
Design analogous to Carpenter et al
(2002)
Are there two systems for vocal learning?
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Vocal imitation and mimicry
Participants: 22 female undergraduates
English first language.
Tasks:
1 copy sentences
2 explicit judgement of speakers goal(happiness or anger)
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Design
All information
No intonation
No words
Incongruent cues
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When did participants understand
the intention?
Judgements of Intention
congruent monotonous reiterant incongruent
sentence type
angry/happy
happy
angry
Intonation is the critical cue
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Imitation task: dependent
variables
Imitation:pitch range.
- emotion behind speech(Scherer, 1986)
Mimicry: Shape of the intonationcontour
- can express an emotion with differentcontours
(Moziconacci & Hermes, 1999)
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Results: Imitation
Intonation reproduce intention
error in reproduction of pitch range
all info no intonation no words
condition
fundamentalf
requency
(Hz)
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Results: Mimicry
No intonation irrelevant style
error in reproduction of contour
all info no intonation no words
condition
fundamentalf
requency
(Hz) error
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Experiment 2: Reproducing
intentions
The second system
Will children reproduce the intention
behind an utterance rather than the
specific words they hear?
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Imitation in children
Meltzoff (1995) 18-month-old children will
copy the intended goal of an action
Taken from Meltzoff (1995)
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Failed attempts and vocal
imitation
An ungrammatical sentence is equivalentto a failed attempt to perform an action
Slobin and Welsh (1973): 2-year-oldsubject omitted meaningless repetitionsfrom her imitations
- Mark fell fell off the horse
- Mark fell off the horse
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Design
Participants: 20 children aged 5 and 6
Ungrammatical vs. grammaticalsentences
Procedure 9 practice trials
Test sentences alternated with fillers
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Results
Children who heard grammaticalsentences were significantly more
accurate in their reproduction of the test
sentences (p
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Results
Children in ungrammatical condition weresignificantly more likely to recast the sentences(p
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Conclusions
Children copy the communicativeintentions behind speech
2 systems for vocal learning
Vocal imitation and action imitation
- Cognitively similar
- Domain general mechanism
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Future studies: 1
Compare reproductions of grammatical
repetitions to reproductions of non-
grammatical repetitions
I thought that that was nice
It was that that nice day
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Future Studies: 2
Tighten analogy with action imitation
Meltzoff Mechanical device
Compare imitation of ungrammatical
sentences delivered by a intentional agent
and a non-intentional agent
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Future studies: 3
Will children reproduce redundant
information?
Memory load
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Dual Processes
System 1: associative, holistic, automatic,undemanding of cognitive capacity,
acquisition by biology, contextualised
System 2: controlled, demanding ofcognitive capacity, analytic, slow,
acquisition by tuition. (Evans, 2006; Over, 2000)
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Mimicry System 1
Evolutionarily old
Shared with many other species
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Imitation System 2
evolutionarily recent and potentially
species unique
Domain general
flexible knowledge general purpose
blade
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Predictions
Higher individual differences in tendency
to imitate
individual differences in imitation should
be correlated with IQ and working memory
capacity
Imitation but not mimicry should be
impaired by placing demands on workingmemory
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Individual differences
Questionnaire: tendency to imitate (Sakkalou &
Gattis)
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Working memory
Goal-directed theory (Bekkering, Wohlschlager &Gattis, 2000)
Processing multiple goals (Perra & Gattis, 2006)
Taken from Bekkering et al (2000)
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Thank you
Thanks to:
Elena Hoicka
Elena Sakkalou
Oliver Perra