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Familiarity and complexity modulate the waychildren imitate tool-use actions: A cross-culturalstudyLamei Wang a , Xiaolan Fu a , Hubert D. Zimmer b & Gisa Aschersleben ba State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science , Institute of Psychology,Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , Chinab Department of Psychology , Saarland University , Saarbruecken , GermanyPublished online: 21 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Lamei Wang , Xiaolan Fu , Hubert D. Zimmer & Gisa Aschersleben (2012) Familiarity andcomplexity modulate the way children imitate tool-use actions: A cross-cultural study, Journal of CognitivePsychology, 24:2, 221-228, DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2011.617300

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Familiarity and complexity modulate the way childrenimitate tool-use actions: A cross-cultural study

Lamei Wang1, Xiaolan Fu1, Hubert D. Zimmer2, and Gisa Aschersleben2

1State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese

Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China2Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany

The effects of action complexity and familiarity on preschooler’s imitation performance wereinvestigated. Thirty-two tool-use action video clips were imitated by 32 German and 32 Chinesepreschoolers. Preschoolers’ imitation performance was better for familiar as compared to unfamiliaractions and for simple as compared to complex actions. Furthermore, imitation errors were classified asmeans (action steps to reach the goal) errors and ends (action outcomes) errors. When imitating simpleactions children made more means than ends errors, whereas more ends errors were made for complexactions. We explain this by the higher demands of processing complex actions on cognitive resources. Thisresult highlights the important role of action complexity in children’s representation of the means andends of tool-use actions. Performances showed a high cross-cultural stability, which indicates thatimitation is a basic learning mechanism thereby uninfluenced by cultures.

Keywords: Complexity; Cross-culture; Familiarity; Imitation; Preschooler.

Learning by imitation is one of the basic learningprinciples. Especially most of advanced actionknowledge is learned by observation and imita-tion followed by practising (Blandin, 2002). Animportant issue concerning imitation is howactions are represented while imitated. A few

prominent theories have been addressed to ex-plain imitation. The common-coding approach(Hommel, Musseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz,2001; Prinz, 1990) proposed that action controland action perception share common abstractrepresentations in terms of action goals. Thedirect mapping approach (Butterworth, 1990)states that the motor system of the imitator

receives direct input from observing the model’smovement, and the mirror neurons have beenclaimed to be the neural substrate of directmapping. Consistently, neurocognitive studies(e.g., Decety et al., 1997) have shown thatperceiving actions largely activates the same brain

structures as performing actions. Similarly, theActive Intermodal Matching approach (Meltzoff& Moore, 1997) states that human infants codehuman acts within an innate supramodal systemthat unifies observation and execution of motoracts. All of these approaches assume that there isa direct link from action perception to executionand they only differ in the assumed mediating

Correspondence should be addressed to Xiaolan Fu, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101,

China. E-mail: fuxl@psych.ac.cn

This work was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China and the National Science Foundation of China (Grants

2011CB302201 and 61075042 to XF) and by the German Research Foundation (Grant IRTG 1457 to GA and HZ). The authors

would like to thank Katja Umla-Runge for her valuable suggestions; Christiane Knorr, Desiree Gard, and Shengzun Song for their

assistance with data collection and coding; and also the preschoolers, families, and kindergartens who participated. We further thank

Valerie Camos, Michael Ziessler, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments on earlier versions of

the manuscript.

JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 24 (2), 221�228

# 2012 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa businesshttp://www.psypress.com/ecp http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2011.617300

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structure (for a review of imitation theories, seeRumiati & Bekkering, 2003).

On the other hand, ‘‘motor programmes’’ werepostulated that provide the necessary informationfor performing known actions and can be directlyaddressed from abstract goals and also verbalcommands (Zimmer, Helstrup, & Nilsson, 2007).Given that these programmes only exist forknown actions, processing of well-known actionsshould differ from that of novel actions, asexpressed in the dual route theory (Rumiati &Tessari, 2002). According to this theory, well-known and meaningful actions can be imitatedalong the indirect route, making use of the actionrepertoire, and additionally along the direct routeleading from the visual analysis to the motorsystem. In contrast, imitation of novel actions isaccomplished along the direct route only. Directevidence for the dual route approach was found inneuroimaging studies (e.g., Rumiati et al., 2005).

Controlling actions by goals is also discussed asmechanisms of preschoolers’ imitation. In theirgoal-directed theory, Bekkerling, Wohlschlager,and Gattis (2000) suggested that the execution isorganised by a goal hierarchy. Children do notsimply match an afferent input to an efferentoutput but they represent abstract and/or con-crete action goals (e.g., the object to reach for orthe movement path). Usually an action can bedescribed in terms of its end (action effect oroutcome) and its means (body movements oraction steps) performed to reach the outcome.Based on their limited cognitive resources chil-dren should represent only the most importantgoal at any particular time and reproduce thiscomponent (Rumiati & Bekkering, 2003). Con-sequentially, when the action is performed for thefirst time (unfamiliar), performing the correctaction steps might be the preliminary goal of theactor in order to reduce the load of the limitedcapacity. According to this view, the familiarity ofthe action should modulate the performance.Tessari and Rumiati (2004) demonstrated thiseffect under time pressure. Familiar and mean-ingful actions were imitated more accurately thannovel and meaningless actions when shown inseparate blocks. One interpretation is that actionsare represented in terms of ends (outcomes) whenknowledge about how to perform the actionpreexists or in terms of means if the action isunfamiliar. In the latter case, the action steps areselected as goals of actions leading to highermemory load and more errors.

These theories, however, do not discuss therole of complexity of actions. Most studies onimitation have used simple actions such as reach-ing and grasping. Although reaching and graspingan object can be considered an action goal, formost tool-use actions this is only an interim steptowards object manipulation to achieve morecomplex goals. Complex actions with several stepscause an even stronger memory load, they causestronger demands, and they finally intensify theproblem of capacity limitations. Therefore, withcomplex actions children should focus more onthe means of actions than with simple actions andmore often miss the end. Considering the fact thatcomplex actions are widely encountered in ourdaily lives, further research on action complexityis needed.

In order to do this, we investigated the role offamiliarity and complexity on imitation of tool-use actions in both German and Chinese pre-schoolers. Because imitation behaviour should beuniversal, we expect in both cultures similarresults. So to speak, these are replications ofeach other in different populations. Culturalfactors can influence performance on cognitivetasks, but working memory and speed of proces-sing were similar between East Asian and Wes-tern cultures (Hedden et al., 2002). We thereforedid not expect different results. We defined actioncomplexity by both objective and subjectivemeasures. The objective measures are the leasttime and number of steps needed to carry out acertain action, and the subjective complexity isjudged by adult raters in the perspective of howcomplex it is for preschoolers. We presentedvideo clips instead of live models to keep experi-mental conditions as similar as possible in boththe Chinese and the German experiments.

We expected preschoolers to imitate familiaractions more accurately than unfamiliar ones.Considering that complex actions will demandmore working memory resources, and that pre-schoolers have limited working memory capacity(Welsh, 2002), we also expect better performancefor simple actions than complex ones. Further-more, we argue that the type of goal-directedimitation is modulated by the familiarity andcomplexity of actions. In particular, we expectfamiliar and simple actions to be represented interms of ends and actions which are unfamiliarand complex to be represented in terms of means.That is, for unfamiliar and complex actions, stepsof movement should be represented as the goal ofimitation and the action ends are sometimes

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missed out. This difference should be indicated bythe type of errors preschoolers make duringimitation.

METHOD

Participants

Sixty-four children (32 Chinese, 32 Germans; halfboys and half girls) participated in this experi-ment. The mean age of Chinese children was 5;4years (range�4;8�6;4, SD�0.43), and the meanage of German children was 5;3 years(range�4;0�6;3, SD�0.62). The children wererecruited from local kindergartens in two rela-tively equivalent provincial capital cities in Chinaand Germany. All participants provided informedconsent from their parents.

Test stimuli

Sixty-eight daily tool-use actions were chosenfrom both Chinese and German cultures andvideotaped. One object or an object and aninstrument were involved in each action andthey could either be uni- or bimanual. Only thehands of the model were visible in each videoduring manipulation of the objects. All videosstarted with both hands lying flat on the table. Allvideos were from first-person perspective. Bydoing so, we wanted to avoid left�right discre-pancy between the model’s and the subjects’movements which might cause errors in imitationand additional mental transformation in recognis-ing the side of the body used by the model (seeChaminade, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005). Further-more, the first-person perspective is more tightlycoupled to the sensory-motor system than thethird-person perspective, which requires addi-tional visuospatial transformation (Jackson,Meltzoff, & Decety, 2006). These action videoswere rated by 20 adults from each culture whowere familiar with 4- to 6-year-old preschoolers.Considering the experience and motor skills ofpreschoolers, they categorised each action intoone of four categories*simple/familiar, simple/unfamiliar, complex/familiar, and complex/unfa-miliar. Familiarity was defined by whether chil-dren have done this before. We then selected 32actions*eight actions for each category*whichwere of similar familiarity and complexity in bothcultures, so that the same set of actions could be

used in both cultures. The duration of the videoclips ranged from 4 to 11 s. Altogether 50 objectswere used in the 32 action videos and presented toevery child. Examples are: To put on a ring(simple and familiar), to clean a pipe with apipe cleaner (simple and unfamiliar), to fold atelescopic umbrella and fix the securing strap(complex and familiar), and to open a walnut byturning the screw of a nutcracker (complex andunfamiliar).1

Two motoric tests*‘‘tapping’’ (M1) and‘‘collecting matches’’ (M2) were selected fromthe MOT 4�6 (Zimmer & Volkamer, 1987) to testchildren’s motoric abilities. For the task M1 it wascounted how many dots the child tapped in 10 s,and for the task M2 it was measured how manyseconds the child needed to collect 40 matchesfrom both sides of the box.

Procedure and design

Children were tested individually in a quiet roomin their kindergarten. Each child was warmlywelcome and seated at the test table.The experimenter sat to the child’s left on thesame side of the test table. The action videos werepresented on a notebook computer in front ofthe experimenter so that they were clearly visibleto the child but out of the child’s reach. A videocamera was placed in front of the child, focusingat the child’s torso, head, and a portion of thedesktop where the imitation was to be performed.

The session started with the MOT item ‘‘tap-ping’’. Four imitation trials followed for practice.Afterwards, children worked on 32 target actions,with the order being counterbalanced betweensubjects. In the end, a second MOT item ‘‘collect-ing matches’’ followed. A few minutes’ rest weregiven in the middle of imitation procedure.

Each action video was presented two times.The child was instructed to watch each video veryclosely because they should imitate what they sawin the video. Then the screen turned black and thecorresponding objects were handed over to thechild for imitation after 3 s delay. The experi-menter was instructed to start the presentation ofthe next video if the child hadn’t started to imitateafter 60 s. However, all children imitated allactions. The objects were kept in a container outof the child’s view before they were presented,

1The videos are available from the corresponding author

on request.

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and returned to the container before the next

action video was started. Regardless of the quality

of the performance, the experimenter said ‘‘very

good’’ to encourage the child. All sessions were

videotaped for later coding.

Coding of imitation responses

Children’s imitations were coded by two raters.

For each imitation response, the child’s general

imitation score and the imitation error pattern

were coded. The general imitation score of each

response was coded as proportion of correctly

imitated steps (correct steps/total steps)2 plus one

point for each end. This point was given if the

child had reached the correct outcome or effect of

the action. Thus, the highest possible imitation

score was 2 for each action.In addition to the overall imitation score, the

error pattern was analysed. Imitation errors were

classified as means errors and ends errors.

Means error. The outcome of the action wascorrect, but at least one of the action steps was

incorrect.

End error. All action steps were correct, but theaction outcome was not identical to the one

shown on the video.In cases when both the action steps and the

outcome of the action differed from those shown

on the video clip, a means error and an end error

were coded. Therefore, the numbers of possible

means errors and ends errors are independent of

each other, and of each type eight errors are

possible.

RESULTS

MOT results

The performance in the two MOT items did notpredict the performance in the imitation task.There were no reliable correlations between twoMOT items and the overall imitation scores intwo cultures, r(M1, imitation scores)��.009;r(M2, imitation scores)�.117.

General imitation score

To examine the influence of complexity andfamiliarity on general imitation performance, weconducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) onchildren’s mean (M) imitation score of eachaction group with familiarity and complexity aswithin-group factors and culture as a between-group factor. Children’s imitation score was high-er for simple actions (M�1.63, SD�0.33) thanfor complex ones (M�1.20, SD�0.27), F(1,62)�236.72, hp

2 �.79, p B.001, and higher forfamiliar (M�1.48, SD�0.38) actions than forunfamiliar ones (M�1.36, SD�0.35),F(1, 62)�17.56, hp

2 �.22, p B.001 (cf. Figure 1).No cultural difference was found between Chi-nese and German children, F(1, 62)�1.68,p�.20, and none of the interactions was signifi-cant (all Fs B1).

Imitation error pattern

We analysed the number of errors in 2�2�2�2ANOVA with the factors familiarity, complexity,and error type as within-group factors and cultureas a between-group factor. In this analysis, cultureshowed only one significant effect (all otherFs B1). The three-way interaction of culture,familiarity, and complexity reached significance,F(1, 62)�4.11, hp

2 �.06, p�.05. This effect goesback to one condition. For familiar and simpleactions, German children (M�1.30) made moreerrors than their Chinese counterparts (M�0.70),t(62)�2.86, pB.001; for all other conditions thenumbers of errors were comparable in bothcultures (all tsB1) (see Figure 2). We thereforeconsider this an accidental effect of the used itemsand we will not further discuss this. In spite of thisdeviance, the pattern of imitation errors was thesame for both cultures as we will show in thefollowing.

2An action step was considered incorrect if it involved at

least one of the following critical mistakes: omission (a step is

not performed), wrong sequence (two correct steps but in

reversed order were coded as one step correct), wrong

movement path (the hand moves in a different direction),

wrong hand or finger, wrong treatment (the object is used

differently, e.g., shaking instead of rotating), wrong object part

is used, wrong orientation of the object while using, wrong

spatial relationship between objects (two objects are incor-

rectly arranged), frequency error (moving once instead of

repeatedly), not identifiable (the movement cannot be recog-

nised). Small differences in holding objects, finger posture, and

kinematic changes such as different velocity or smoothness

were ignored. The two raters agreed in 92% of all judged

actions.

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Complexity as well as familiarity strongly

influenced the imitation behaviour and the type

of errors. A significant main effect of complexity

was observed, F(1, 62)�392.75, hp2 �.86, pB.001.

More errors were made for complex actions

(M�3.28, SD�0.11) than for simple actions

(M�1.35, SD�0.11) and also for unfamiliar

actions (M�2.68, SD�0.13) than familiar ones

(M�1.95, SD�0.11), F (1, 62)�44.84, hp2 �.42,

p B.001. Moreover a strong interaction between

complexity and error type was found, F(1,

62)�66.24, hp2 �.51, pB.001 (cf. Figure 2).

Whereas for simple actions, children made more

means errors than ends errors, the reversed

pattern was obtained for complex actions: Chil-

dren made more ends than means errors. Addi-

tionally, the two-way interaction familiarity by

error type was significant, F(1, 62)�6.69,

hp2 �.10, pB.05. For familiar actions more ends

errors were observed than means errors, whereas

for unfamiliar actions no difference was observed

(see Figure 2). However, in terms of effect size,

the effect of complexity was five times larger than

the one of familiarity.As the figures clearly show, German and

Chinese children showed the same pattern of

imitation errors. The most pronounced effect is,

that for simple actions, children made more

means errors than ends errors, whereas for com-

plex actions, children made more ends errors than

means errors.

DISCUSSION

The current study examined the role of actioncomplexity and familiarity in action imitation ofGerman and Chinese preschoolers. As expectedchildren from both cultures showed comparableresults. This finding supports the assumptionthat imitation behaviour is a basic universalcompetence, which is not influenced by culturaleffects * as long as long-term memory demandsare comparable. It is, among others, based onspeed of processing and working memory, whichare both found to be independent from culture(Hedden et al., 2002).

Children exhibited better imitation perfor-mance for familiar than unfamiliar actions,which is consistent with the findings obtainedin adults. The general effect of familiarity canbe well explained on the basis of the DualRoute Model (Rumiati & Tessari, 2002), eventhough it was previously only used to explainadult imitation behaviour in the context ofmeaningful and meaningless actions. Thus, wewill be able to apply this model to children’simitation behaviour. Imitation of familiar ac-tions can rely on stored representations in long-term memory and therefore participants can usethe semantic as well as the direct route, whereasimitation of unfamiliar actions is only possibleby using the direct route. The existence of thedual route provides a redundancy gain; knownactions induce a smaller memory load because

Figure 1. Imitation scores obtained in the four different groups of actions (maximum �2). Error bars indicate standard errors of

the mean.

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representation of the goal is sufficient. Bothmechanisms cause an advantage for familiarcompared to unfamiliar actions.

Additionally, we observed a much betterimitation performance for simple than for com-plex actions as expected. We interpret this by thefact that complex actions generally require morecognitive resources than simple ones. Complexactions consist of more steps than simple ones andthis causes a much higher mental load. Given thelimitations of memory capacity in children, com-plex actions might frequently overcharge theirworking memory.

However, the most interesting results obtainedin the present study were related to the type oferror children made. When imitating simpleactions, means errors were most prevalent, butwhen imitating complex actions ends errors weremost frequent. This pattern suggests that forcomplex actions more attention was paid toaction means, as compared to the imitation ofsimple actions, which were focused on ends. Put itdifferently, assuming that children realised theirintended action goal, means got the status ofaction goals with complex actions and theydominated performance, whereas the endscontinue to be action goals in simple actions.

Considering that children could not reach the endof some complex action because the action wastoo difficult, which might have partially influ-enced the results, we excluded those actions thatseemed to be motorically difficult to perform bysome children. That is, we did not count it as anend error if a child made a correct attempt toreach a specific end but did not succeed. Evenafter this rather extreme exclusion, the interac-tion between complexity and type of error re-mained significant, F(1, 62)�13.35, pB.01.Furthermore, when we excluded those ‘‘difficultto perform’’ actions, the interaction betweenfamiliarity and error type disappeared. Unfami-liar actions still caused more errors than familiarones, F(1, 62)�69.03, pB.001, but now generallymore means errors than ends errors were ob-served, F(1, 62)�14.62, pB.001. Not countingthe end error if the action was motoricallydifficult to perform necessarily reduced endserrors and it did so more for familiar than forunfamiliar actions, which do not belong to thechildren’s action repertoire. Therefore, the inter-action disappeared. This suggests that the rela-tively high number of ends errors to familiaractions mainly goes back to difficulties in motorperformance. If effects of difficulties in execution

Figure 2. Number of means and ends errors (maximum �8) depending on the complexity and familiarity of action for Chinese

and German participants. Ends errors are depicted as circular symbols connected by a broken line and means errors are depicted as

square symbols connected by a continuous line. Open symbols refer to unfamiliar actions and closed symbols refer to familiar

actions. Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean.

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are removed, means errors are generally predo-minant. In contrast, the interaction betweencomplexity and type of error remained even afterexclusion of motorically difficult items demon-strating that this interaction was not solely due todifficulties in motor performance and thereforethe actions’ complexity has an independent influ-ence on the pattern of errors.

To our knowledge, this interaction betweencomplexity and type of error has not been shownbefore, but it can be derived from the theory ofgoal-directed imitation and hierarchically orga-nised goals in imitation (Bekkering et al., 2000;Byrne & Russon, 1998). Whether an action stepserves as a mean to reach a goal or as a subgoalitself depends on the participant’s action repre-sentation. Children may not be able to representcomplex actions as an integrated hierarchy. Con-sequentially, they represent individual subgoals,which are the means of the action and thesemeans become the highest-level goal within thehierarchically organised goals of the actuallyperformed action. Ends are then frequentlymissed. This interpretation is similar to the onegiven by Wohlschlager and Bekkering (2002),who attributed differences in imitation accuracyto differences in working memory capacity whenchildren are required to imitate complex actions.However, we have to add one aspect. Simpleactions should not exceed working memorycapacity and few imitation errors should thereforeoccur. This is what we observed. But also weobtained a qualitative change in the error type.When children made a mistake, it was mainly anerror in means.

A competing explanation was put forward byWilliamson and colleagues (Williamson, Meltzoff,& Markman, 2008). They argued that childrenvary their imitation depending on the clearness ofthe action’s end. When children do not under-stand the overall reason for a model’s behaviour,they will be more likely to imitate the meansprecisely. In contrast, when the reason for anaction is clear, children will be more likely todeviate from the manners and use their ownmeans to complete the action. This idea makessense and we partially use the same explanation.We also assume that with simple actions childrenfocus the goal and therefore make errors regard-ing the action’s means. However, would theclearness of the end be the only reason for that,we should expect to observe the strongest inter-action with the factor of familiarity * the goals ofunfamiliar actions are less clear than those of

familiar ones. In contrast, we got the strongesteffect for complexity. We therefore assume thatthe authors are right in their executive part oftheir explanations, i.e., how specific representa-tions cause action errors, but not in their explana-tion where these differences in the representationoriginate from. Of course, if the goal is unclear, itis not represented. We avoided this by presentingthe videos two times. But even if the goal is clear,it can be difficult fully to represent the hierarchyof means and to relate them to the end. Un-connected pieces of part actions would be theconsequence, causing a high mental load andmaking forgetting the final part of an actionlikely.

Hence, if one wants to predict imitationperformance it is critical to know how the to-be-imitated action is represented and which informa-tion is focused at the moment of execution.Familiarity and complexity are two factors thatstrongly influence these components of imitationbehaviour. The present study deepens the theoryof goal-directed imitation in the way of clarifyingwhich factors may affect the goal representation.Furthermore, this is the first time that imitationbeing tested in a cross-cultural setting, especiallyamong cross-cultural children.

Original manuscript received January 2011

Revised manuscript received May 2011

First published online November 2011

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