Infants' selective imitation of a transitive agent and an intransitive agent

This study examined how the reliability (i.e., transitivity) of an agent's object choices affects 16-month-old infants' (N = 48) imita-tion of her unconventional way of turning on a touch light box with her head when her hands were available. When the agent made transitive choices (i.e., she chose Object A over Object B, Object B over Object C, and then A over C), infants imitated her head touch actions. When the agent made intransitive choices (i.e., after choosing A over B and B over C, she chose C over A), infants were more likely to use only their hands to touch the light box. In addi-tion, when it was presumably difficult for infants to judge the tran-sitivity of the agent's choices (i.e., she chose B over C, A over B, and then A over C), they used their hands more. These results demon-strate that infants' understanding informs their decisions to selec-tively imitate others' specific ways to act on novel artifacts, consistent with young children's selective trust in information pro-vided by other people based on their epistemic reliability.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.