What do you think?
Rate this book
Cambridge Studies in Cognitive and Perceptual Development
The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases
Modern research demonstrates that imitation is more complex and interesting than classical theories proposed. Monkeys do not imitate whereas humans are prolific imitators. This book provides an analysis of empirical work on imitation and shows how much can be learned through interdisciplinary research ranging from cells to individuals, apes to men, and babies to adults. Covering diverse perspectives on a great puzzle of human psychology, the book is multidisciplinary in its approach to revealing how and why we imitate.
364 pages, Hardcover
First published April 18, 2002
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2024
This work is probably the heritage of the proper scholastic tradition in my opinion, starting with Piaget (1896-1980), with the proposition that imitation is the cornerstone of psychic development.
This is probably also the message of the Bible, as told in the metaphors and parables that are completely omitted by swedish evangelical-lutheran religionists who worship Zeus and seek comfort and inauthentic consolation as remedy to the trauma of inadequacy and low self esteem, in the murder of christ and suggestive music.
Imitation provides roots for a theory of mind, (mentalisering), i.e. the metaphysics of the soul, solving the cartesian mind-body-enigma, and establishes peace and harmony between science and the mystical religious tradition.
Humans imitate the goals , the intentions , the desired outcome , of the other. This is the basis of all mental life. Imitation is integrated with personal autobiography, via an idiosyncratic process , to produce the personality. Some authors use the word Emulate, from latin Æmulus meaning rival, (from which my second name Emil/Æmilius derive)
This happens automatically through attention (which is the main spiritual insight by Simone Weil). Highly salient outcomes motivates attention and therefore imitation. What does this mean ? It means that beauty (and goodness, and truth) recruits attention, where deep attention means that the intentional depth (intentionsdjup) of mentalisation becomes complete. Imitation enhances probablity for action, through an idiosyncratic process depending on salience of the context.
Imitation means that human nature uses the own body schema as reference to interpret the other person. Because of a shared nature, i.e. the typical anatomical architecture, mentalisation , theory of mind, becomes possible, we use our own body as projection on the desynchronized body that is similar to our own.
Execution of bodily movement, contraction of the muscles of the body, starting as an endogenous embryonal process, through reflexes (reflex meaning light, i.e. nerve movement coming via the fundamental laws of nature) is the scaffolding upon and within which affects and sensory modalities are interwoven. This makes imitation and emulation possible; a representation is built to be recruited by the sensory modalities, which is the explanation of primum mobile , the ideomotor principle , how mental events cause motor action.
There is a distinction between symbolic and iconic representation , where iconic is more embodied. There is EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE that the probability that a particular stimulus will lead to action is ENHANCED when paired with iconic instruction compared to symbolic innstruction. In reality, both modes are part of embodied perception. Plato would promote symbolic representation and instruction , i.e. the ideas , over iconic bodily representation. These experiments indicate that Plato is mistaken, which would be analogous to the fundamentalist iconoclasm , and the banishing of church art in favour of symbolic instructuon by the preacher.
Also, Western music contains the programme for righteous bodily movement; the structure of music is totally analogous to the structure of mental and motor action; Bach for instance, is an instruction to perform certain movements; this of course having a more symbolic yet simultaneously iconic , embodied , dimension.
This all of course, meaning developmental psychology, having bearing on the discussion of faith, becoming righteous, sanctified, etc. Fundamentally , nothing new is added, but through studying human nature , i.e. humanities , the proper interpretation of the bible as well as church dogma is possible.
This is probably also the message of the Bible, as told in the metaphors and parables that are completely omitted by swedish evangelical-lutheran religionists who worship Zeus and seek comfort and inauthentic consolation as remedy to the trauma of inadequacy and low self esteem, in the murder of christ and suggestive music.
Imitation provides roots for a theory of mind, (mentalisering), i.e. the metaphysics of the soul, solving the cartesian mind-body-enigma, and establishes peace and harmony between science and the mystical religious tradition.
Humans imitate the goals , the intentions , the desired outcome , of the other. This is the basis of all mental life. Imitation is integrated with personal autobiography, via an idiosyncratic process , to produce the personality. Some authors use the word Emulate, from latin Æmulus meaning rival, (from which my second name Emil/Æmilius derive)
This happens automatically through attention (which is the main spiritual insight by Simone Weil). Highly salient outcomes motivates attention and therefore imitation. What does this mean ? It means that beauty (and goodness, and truth) recruits attention, where deep attention means that the intentional depth (intentionsdjup) of mentalisation becomes complete. Imitation enhances probablity for action, through an idiosyncratic process depending on salience of the context.
Imitation means that human nature uses the own body schema as reference to interpret the other person. Because of a shared nature, i.e. the typical anatomical architecture, mentalisation , theory of mind, becomes possible, we use our own body as projection on the desynchronized body that is similar to our own.
Execution of bodily movement, contraction of the muscles of the body, starting as an endogenous embryonal process, through reflexes (reflex meaning light, i.e. nerve movement coming via the fundamental laws of nature) is the scaffolding upon and within which affects and sensory modalities are interwoven. This makes imitation and emulation possible; a representation is built to be recruited by the sensory modalities, which is the explanation of primum mobile , the ideomotor principle , how mental events cause motor action.
There is a distinction between symbolic and iconic representation , where iconic is more embodied. There is EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE that the probability that a particular stimulus will lead to action is ENHANCED when paired with iconic instruction compared to symbolic innstruction. In reality, both modes are part of embodied perception. Plato would promote symbolic representation and instruction , i.e. the ideas , over iconic bodily representation. These experiments indicate that Plato is mistaken, which would be analogous to the fundamentalist iconoclasm , and the banishing of church art in favour of symbolic instructuon by the preacher.
Also, Western music contains the programme for righteous bodily movement; the structure of music is totally analogous to the structure of mental and motor action; Bach for instance, is an instruction to perform certain movements; this of course having a more symbolic yet simultaneously iconic , embodied , dimension.
This all of course, meaning developmental psychology, having bearing on the discussion of faith, becoming righteous, sanctified, etc. Fundamentally , nothing new is added, but through studying human nature , i.e. humanities , the proper interpretation of the bible as well as church dogma is possible.
Displaying 1 of 1 review