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University of Missouri--Columbia

Do infants selectively imitate a transitive and an intransitive agent?

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Previous research showed that in imitative learning, infants seemed to care about the reliability of the model marked by group membership or conventionality of behaviors. Current study made use of 16-month-old infants' understanding of transitivity of choices among objects (i.e., if an agent chooses A>B, B>C, then A>C) and further explored whether the transitivity of an agents' choices can also be used as an indicator of reliability to influence infant's imitative learning of a novel action from the agent. The results showed that remarkably more infants imitated the agent who made transitive choices, whereas significantly less infants imitated the agent who made intransitive choices. Taken together with previous research, these results suggested that reliability marked by an agent's transitivity of choices indeed made a difference in 16-month-old infants' imitative learning from her.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
M.A.
Level thesis:degree_level
Masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Psychological sciences (MU)
Grantor dc:publisher
University of Missouri--Columbia
Year dc:date.issued
2018

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Weng, Qiaochu
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Luo, Yuyan

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • Access to files is limited to the University of Missouri--Columbia with SSO login.
Language dc:language.iso
eng, English

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/69888

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Missouri
Base URL
mospace.umsystem.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Weng, Qiaochu. Do infants selectively imitate a transitive and an intransitive agent?. Masters thesis, University of Missouri--Columbia, 2018. https://hdl.handle.net/10355/69888