中華心理學刊
民95 ， 48 卷， 1 期， 13-33

Chi-Tai Huang（Department of Human Development, Tzu Chi University）；Shin-Ru Jiang（Department of Psychology, Chung Yuan University）

Abstract

The goal-directed imitation theory suggests that imitation involves representing an observed action as a set of components that are hierarchically specified from major to less important goals. Given limited resources, 
children tend to encode end points as dominant over movement paths. Under this logic, two experiments were conducted here to examine imitative performance of infants and preschoolers using object manipulation tasks. In Experiment 1, the experimenter performed a sequence of two actions on objects unimanually with ipsilateral or contralateral hand paths. In each condition, some actions were followed by their salient effects; some were not. In Experiment 2, the adult manipulated two objects with the same hand while the other hand grasped a cup or was free staying close to chest. In two experiments, children from both age groups were likely to reenact the observed actions with ipsilateral hands. This ipsilateral preference was not affected by either perceptual saliency or task constraints. In contrast to the Bekkering, Wohlschl ger, and Gattis (2000) study, contralateral responses were relatively rare in the present study. While it may not be possible here to identify how much the goal-directed process reduces the tendency to copy the adult s behavioral strategy and contralateral actions, it is important to consider the constraints inherent in the current task. 

Keywords: imitation, goal-directed imitation, understanding of intentions, tool use, action representation