{"id":2068,"date":"2010-05-15T19:34:18","date_gmt":"2010-05-15T17:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2024-02-24T11:01:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T10:01:11","slug":"overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman: Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting paper by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli \u201cOverimitation in Kalahari Bushman Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition\u201d in Psychological Science,May 2010, 21: 729-736. You will find a freely available version <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/Overimitation-in-Kalahari-Bushman-Children.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Children are surrounded by objects that they must learn to use. One of the most efficient ways children do this is by imitation. Recent work has shown that, in contrast to nonhuman primates, human children focus more on reproducing the specific actions used than on achieving actual outcomes when learning by imitating. From 18 months of age, children will routinely copy even arbitrary and unnecessary actions. This puzzling behavior is called overimitation. By documenting similarities exhibited by children from a large, industrialized city and children from remote Bushman communities in southern Africa, we provide here the first indication that overimitation may be a universal human trait. We also show that overimitation is unaffected by the age of the child, differences in the testing environment, or familiarity with the demonstrating adult. Furthermore, we argue that, although seemingly maladaptive, overimitation reflects an evolutionary adaptation that is fundamental to the development and transmission of human culture.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting paper by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli \u201cOverimitation in Kalahari Bushman Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition\u201d in Psychological Science,May 2010, 21: 729-736. You will find a freely available version here. Abstract: Children are surrounded by objects that they must learn to use. One of the most efficient ways children do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman: Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman: Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An interesting paper by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli \u201cOverimitation in Kalahari Bushman Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition\u201d in Psychological Science,May 2010, 21: 729-736. You will find a freely available version here. Abstract: Children are surrounded by objects that they must learn to use. One of the most efficient ways children do [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-15T17:34:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-02-24T10:01:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The ICCI Team\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/\",\"name\":\"Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman: Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition - International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-05-15T17:34:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-02-24T10:01:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/overimitation-in-kalahari-bushman-children-and-the-origins-of-human-cultural-cognition\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\",\"name\":\"The ICCI Team\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cdc7166b2c4c44441b1c2c13cea716e8?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fcognitionandculture.local%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fbelle%2Fuser.png&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The ICCI Team\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18559,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions\/18559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}