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Over-Imitation in the Kalahari Desert and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition

Mark Nielsen¹ and Keyan Tomaselli²

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1. University of Queensland, School of Psychology
2. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Culture, Communication and Media Studies Unit

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Manuscript

Date:

Received 09 April 2009 04:57 UTC; Posted 09 April 2009

Subjects:

Evolutionary Biology

Tags:

• overimitation;
• social
• learning;
• culture

Abstract:

Children grow up in environments saturated with tools and objects which they must learn to use. One of the most efficient ways in which children do this is by imitating. Recent work has shown that, in contrast to non-human primates, when young children learn by imitating they focus more on reproducing the specific actions used than the actual outcomes achieved. From about 18 months of age children will routinely copy arbitrary and unnecessary actions. This puzzling behaviour is called 'over-imitation'. By documenting similarities exhibited by children from a large, industrialised city and children from remote Bushman communities in southern Africa, we provide here the first indication that over-imitation is a universal human trait. We also show that over-imitation is unaffected by the age of the child, testing environment, or familiarity of the demonstrating adult. Furthermore we argue that, although seemingly maladaptive, over-imitation reflects an evolutionary adaptation fundamental to the development and transmission of human culture.

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Nielsen, Mark and Tomaselli, Keyan. Over-Imitation in the Kalahari Desert and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.3049.1> (2009)

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