Imitation - Deferred Imitation

Deferred Imitation

Piaget coined the term deferred imitation and suggested that it arises out of the child's increasing ability to "form mental representations of behavior performed by others." Deferred imitation is also "the ability to reproduce a previously witnessed action or sequence of actions in the absence of current perceptual support for the action." Instead of copying what is currently occurring, individuals repeat the action or behavior later on. It appears that infants show an improving ability for deferred imitation as they get older, especially by 24 months. By 24 months, infants are able to imitate action sequences after a delay of up to three months, meaning that "they're able to generalize knowledge they have gained from one test environment to another and from one test object to another."