Abstract

Theories that account for the imitative mechanisms primarily consider the role of bodily representations and their involvement during storage of information. However, these theories neglect an evolutionary perspective. To bridge the gap, a group of primary school children were requested to imitate actions of different difficulty performed by 2 models, an adult and a child. Simple actions were imitated by children in a similar manner, regardless of whether the model was an adult or another child.; however, complex actions were imitated better when children copied the adult model. Results suggest a functional role of the model: when the cognitive load increases, it becomes more adaptive to rely on a more reliable model, e.g. the adult.