Learning by Imitation: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: Learning by imitation: a hierarchical approach by Richard W. Byrne and Anne E. Russon This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ LEARNING BY IMITATION: A HIERARCHICAL APPROACH Richard W Byrne Scottish Primate Research Group School of Psychology University of St Andrews Fife KY16 9JU SCOTLAND rwb(a)st-andrews.ac.uk Anne E Russon Department of Psychology Glendon College, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue Toronto M4N 3M6 CANADA gl250035(a)venus.yorku.ca KEYWORDS: imitation, priming, emulation, hierarchical organization, great apes ABSTRACT: To explain social learning without invoking the cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process, priming, in which input increases the activation of stored internal representations. Imitation itself has generally been seen as a "special faculty". This has diverted much research towards the all-or-none question of whether an animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive results. In the great apes, however, voluntary, learned behaviour is hierarchically organized. This means that imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single out two clearly distinct ones: the "action level", a rather detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and the "program level", a broader description of subroutine structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural "program". Program level imitation is a high-level, constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning of complex skills and thus not very evident in the simple manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory. As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of orangutans undergoing "rehabilitation" to the wild. Representing and manipulating relations between objects seems to be one basic building-block in their hierarchical programs. There is evidence that nonhuman great apes suffer from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some chimpanzee behaviour previously described as "emulation" and suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social role, even in humans. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.byrne.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.byrne ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.byrne gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals