Abstract
Infants were shown three modeled acts presented in sequence. Imitation of one, two, or three of the modeled acts or failure to imitate was then observed. Distress was assessed prior to and following modeling. Infants who failed to imitate at least one act displayed a high level of distress. As a control, the same infants on another day observed the random manipulation of the stimuli. Distress failed to occur when the infants failed to imitate the scattering procedure. These results are discussed in terms of the child's development of internal standards. That is, during the latter part of the second year of life, infants show considerable distress when they fail to imitate coherent modeled acts. Since distress did not occur when the model simply scattered the stimuli, we assumed that interruption of play was not an incentive for distress. Deferred imitation was noted for older but not the younger cohorts.
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This research was supported in part by grants from MN 36491 from the National Institute of Mental Health, the U.S. Public Health Service, and Wake Forest Research and Publication funds to the first author. This paper was presented at the Meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco, 1979.
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Richman, C.L., Novack, T., Price, C. et al. The consequences of failing to imitate. Motiv Emot 7, 157–167 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992899
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992899