DEFERRED IMITATION ACROSS CHANGES IN CONTEXT AND OBJECT - MEMORY AND GENERALIZATION IN 14-MONTH-OLD INFANTS

The influence of changes in context and object characteristics on defe rred imitation was assessed in 14-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants in the imitation group saw an adult demonstrate target acts on miniature objects in an unusual context (an orange polka-dot tent). W hen later presented with larger objects in a normal laboratory room, t hese infants performed significantly more target acts than did control s. In Experiment 2, three groups of infants were tested. Infants in an imitation(no change) group saw an adult demonstrate target acts and w ere subsequently tested in the same room using the same objects as the adult. Infants in the imitation (context + object size & color change ) group followed the same procedure, but both the context and two sali ent featural characteristics of the objects (size and color) were chan ged between encoding and the recall test of deferred imitation. Contro l infants did not see the target demonstrations. Results showed that t he combined changes in context and object features led to a significan t decrease in imitative performance. Nonetheless, in comparison to the controls, infants exhibited significant recall as indexed by deferred imitation. The results show that imitation generalizes across changes in object size, object color, and test context. The implications for theories of memory and representational development are discussed.