International Research Journal of Commerce , Arts and Science
( Online- ISSN 2319 - 9202 ) New DOI : 10.32804/CASIRJ
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AUTOMATIC IMITATION: UNWILLINGLY COPYING THE ACTIONS OF OTHERS
3 Author(s): SANDEEP KUMAR , RAJBIR SINGH ,BINDU KUMARI
Vol - 5, Issue- 1 , Page(s) : 172 - 179 (2014 ) DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/CASIRJ
“Automatic Imitation” is a species of Stimulus Response Compatibility effect in which the speed and/ or accuracy of behavioral performance is modulated by relationship between topographic features of task- irrelevant stimuli and participant’s responses (Heyes, 2011). Stimulus Response Compatibility protocols have been used for many years to investigate action representation and control. (Simon, 1969; Stroop, 1935). It is a new behavioral phenomenon, comparable with the Stroop and Simon effects, providing strong evidence that even adult humans are prone, in an unwilled and unreasoned way, to copy the action of others. The scientific study on imitation began in late nineteenth century; it has been interpreted in two radically different ways. On one hand, it has been viewed as a sophisticated cognitive process, essential for human development and enculturation (Washburn, 1908). On the other hand, as a blind, brutish and irrational force in human affairs (Darwin, 1871). Automatic imitation captures two substantial, widely held and apparently paradoxical assumptions about the phenomenon that it is relatively independent to the actor’s intentions yet is related in an important way to the deliberate copying of observed body movements. In everyday life and laboratory, when a person is asked to imitate an action, he or she reproduces the topography of the modeled movement by using the same part of the body (Heyes & Ray, 2004).