Imitation as cultural learning

Quotation from

Learning through Others.

By Michael Tomasello

Daedalus. Volume: 133. Issue: 1.

2004. P. 51+.

(Available from Questia)

What is 'social learning' ?

For social species such as humans and other mammals, an especially important form of learning is social learning. Observing the activities of others and learning about the world from or through them enables individuals to acquire information with less effort and risk than if they were forced to learn on their own.

What, then, is cultural learning?

'Cultural learning', that involves the perception of intentions of others is a special type of social learning.

In brief, because human beings perceive the behavior of others in intentional terms--that is, because they perceive a person 'cleaning the table' or 'opening the drawer,' rather than simply moving her limbs in a particular way--they learn from the behavior of others in unique ways. We have called this process 'cultural learning' to distinguish it from processes of social learning in general, and also to highlight the crucial role of culture in the acquisition of many human skills.

Understanding intentions of others

The recognition of others as intentional beings like oneself is crucial in learning to use tools and linguistic symbols.

The recognition of others as intentional beings like oneself is crucial in human learning, most importantly because artifacts and practices--exemplified prototypically by the use of tools and linguistic symbols--invariably point beyond themselves to the phenomena for which they have been designed. To learn the conventional use of a tool or a symbol, an individual must therefore come to understand why, toward what outside end, another individual is using it. (4)

4 Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.

'Imitation' by humans and 'emulation' by chimpanzees

'Imitation' and 'emulation' are almost synonyms but the former emphasizes the aspect of impersonation.

Imitate:
1. to follow or endeavor to follow as a model or example: to imitate an author's style; to imitate an older brother.
2. to mimic; impersonate

Dictionary.com Unabridged.

Retrieved April 08, 2010, from Dictionary.com website:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/imitate

Emulate: To strive to equal or excel, especially through imitation

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

Retrieved April 08, 2010, from Dictionary.com website:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emulate

Given the above distinction, it is possible to say that humans are good at imitatation, while chimpanzees at emulation.

In some circumstances, emulation learning is a more adaptive strategy than learning by imitation. For example, Kathy Nagell, Kelly Olguin, and I presented chimpanzees and two-year-old human children with a rake-like tool and an out-of-reach object. (6) The tool could be used in either of two ways leading to the same end result of obtaining the object. Within each species, one group of subjects observed a demonstrator employ a relatively inefficient method of tool use, while another group observed a more efficient method of tool use. The result: human children in general copied the method of the assigned demonstrator (imitative learning), while chimpanzees used the same methods to obtain the object no matter which demonstration they observed (emulation learning). The interesting point is that many children insisted on reproducing adult behavior even if it seemed inefficient--leading to a less successful performance than that of the chimpanzees. Imitation is thus not a 'higher' or 'more intelligent' learning strategy than emulation; it is simply a more culturally mediated strategy--which, in some circumstances and for some behaviors, has some advantages.

6 Katherine Nagell, Raquel Olguin, and Michael Tomasello,

"Processes of Social Learning in the Tool Use of

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and Human Children (Homo sapiens),"

Journal of Comparative Psychology 107 (1993): 174-186.

Apprenticeship by trusting the intentions of a mentor?

Humans can 'trust' others by understanding their intentions separately from their behaviors.

Humans perceive the demonstrator's apparent intention as centrally important, and they understand this goal as something separate from the various behavioral means that may be used to accomplish it. In the absence of this ability to understand goal and behavioral means as separable in the actions of others, chimpanzees focus on the changes of state (including changes in the spatial position) of the objects during the demonstration, perceiving the actions of the demonstrator just, in effect, as other physical motions. The intentional states of the demonstrator, and thus her behavioral methods as distinct entities, are simply not a part of their experience.

Apprenticeship, sometimes criticized as uncritical imitation, may be a very smart strategy.

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Who is Harry Stack Sullivan and what did he say?

Quotation from

Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory and Psychotherapy.

By F. Barton Evans III

Routledge: London, 1996.

(Also available in Questia)

Harry Stack Sullivan, "was the founder and chief proponent of a branch of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic thinking called variously interpersonal psychiatry or interpersonal psychoanalysis." (p. 3)



Sullivan is often criticized for his "lack of concern for intrapsychic phenomena." However, Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) believe that the criticism is mistaken:

The belief that Sullivan's theory ignores intrapsychic phenomena is what one usually hears from psychoanalytic colleagues, indicating that it is deeply in the lore of the psychoanalytic community. Yet, as Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) state, the criticism that Sullivan favored interpersonal over intrapsychic phenomena is largely due to a misreading or lack of understanding of Sullivan. Regarding the so-called debate between interpersonal versus intrapsychic models, Sullivan pointed out that human experience is a dynamically unfolding interaction between interpersonal, environmental influences and the internal (i.e. intrapsychic) meaning system of self and other personifications which interpretatively modify one's perception and responses to these external experiences. (p. 7)

Greenberg, J.R. and Mitchell, S.A. (1983) Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Sullivan's theory is to be described as an interpersonal theory of psychiatry.

Whereas great thinkers like Freud, Jung, and Kraepelin oriented their penetrating insights on the functioning of the individual, Sullivan offered a systematic conception of humankind in its social world or context. (p. 55)

It is not that Sullivan neglected the intra-psychic.

For Sullivan, that which is truly intra-psychic is purely private and essentially unknowable. Once a person discusses, or even anticipates discussing, an “internal” experience, it is no longer private or internal, but becomes an interpersonal event, affected by social forces. (p. 57)

A psychiatrist or indeed any observer interferes with her own observation and everything she observes is at least partially affected by her: other observer would see a different picture and no one is the true observer.

As Sullivan observed, everyone has his or her own conception of human living (i.e. our personal “theories of personality”) which is experienced and strongly held as intuitively correct. This deeply personal conception of “reality” is central in bringing coherence to the personal and non-personal world around us and to whom we are in that world.
...
Similar to Heisenberg's (1958) principle of indeterminacy (which, in sub-atomic physics, is where the measurement of a phenomenon with the same level of phenomenon alters the phenomena measured), the psychiatrist observer participates in and alters every interaction that he or she observes. Unlike Heisenberg's measurement electrons whose properties are well known, the properties of the psychiatrist are far more puzzling. (p.58)

Heisenberg, W. (1958) Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row.

Likewise, other persons around a person constitutes what the person is through interactions.

Sullivan's central definition and most distinguishing contribution is a revision of psychiatry as the science of interpersonal living,that personality could not be separated from the interpersonal world in which the person lives. The interpersonal theory is a significant critique and reworking of Freud's psychoanalytic approach and major departure from Kraepelin's descriptive psychiatry. (p.60)

Sullivan also takes a developmental approach. Of great interest is his distinction of prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic modes of experience.

The following is a summary of Sullivan's idea of epochs of development.

Sullivan defined infancy as the period from birth until the development of articulate speech. Childhood marks the appearance of the need for playmates, both adult and child, and is the first step in developing interpersonal communication through language. The juvenile era begins with the child's entrance into school and continues until the child finds a chum. Most importantly, it was the first developmental stage where family limitations and peculiarities were open to substantial modification. In pre-adolescence, the need for chumship, an intimate relationship with a compeer, a person of comparable age and status, is the central developmental event. Early adolescence begins with puberty and genital sexuality, the psychologically strong interest in members of opposite sex, and involves resolving the complex interplay between the dynamisms of lust, security, and intimacy. In late adolescence, the person begins to integrate the partially developed aspects of the personality into an age-appropriate, early adult identity. The task of adulthood is to establish a relationship of love with another person, someone who becomes as important as oneself. For Sullivan, this adult intimacy is “not the primary business of life, but is, perhaps the principal source of satisfactions in life” (1953:34). (p. 73)

Sullivan, Harry Stack (1953) The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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Ch.1 of "Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences"

Quotation from

Chapter 1: Introduction of

Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences.

By Donald E. Polkinghorne

State University of New York Press: Albany, NY.:1988.

(Also available in Questia)

The study of human experience needs to include "meaningfulness."

EXPERIENCE is meaningful and human behavior is generated from and informed by this meaningfulness. Thus, the study of human behavior needs to include an exploration of the meaning systems that form human experience. (p. 1)

Three levels of human existence: matter, life and consciousness.

The two most dramatic threshold points for the organization of human existence appear at the transition from matter to life and the transition from life to consciousness. (p. 2)

An explanation at a lower level reduces complexity of a higher level and leads to loss of information.

[T]ranslation across realms of existence requires reduction of complexity and loss of information, as, for example, when narrative's intricacy is reduced to only those structures or operations that are recognized in the organic or the material realms. (p. 10)

The human disciplines as distinct from the physical sciences.

Although the material realm might best be studied by the use of quantifying procedures and statistical estimates, the realm of meaning is best captured through the qualitative nuances of its expression in ordinary language. The disciplines of history and literary criticism have developed procedures and methods for studying the realm of meaning through its expressions in language. The human disciplines will need to look to those disciplines, rather than to the physical sciences, for a scientific model for inquiry of the region of consciousness.(p. 10)

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