Imitation: An Important Learning-to-Learn Skill
Imitation is an Important ‘Learning-to-Learn’ Skill
Once your child is able to sit and complete simple tasks for 3-5 minutes you can begin to teach motor imitation. This means that you will teach your child to imitate your movements. You want your child to understand that when you say, “Do this” as you are making a movement, he should copy what you are doing. This is a fairly simple skill to teach. Once your child learns to imitate, he will be able to use his imitation skills to learn and practice doing new things that you show him how to do. For this reason, it’s a good skill to choose early on. We call this a learning-to-learn skill or a foundational learning skill. Like eye contact, once a child learns this skill, it will help him to learn many other skills.
In fact, all children learn a great deal by watching those around them and imitating the things they do. For children who have difficulties with language, learning through imitating others is an especially important skill. Imitation can also be used as a prompt when teaching new skills. For example, in the following clip, the teacher is working on teaching a little boy who cannot yet speak, to shake his head to answer “no” and nod for “yes.” The little boy has good imitation skills. Therefore, his teacher uses an imitation prompt or model prompt. This means that the teacher prompts by modeling the action. The teacher knows that the boy would prefer the Play-Doh to the block. So, he models a nod indicating “yes” to the question, “Do you want Play-Doh?” As soon as the boy imitates the nod, the teacher immediately reinforces him by giving him the Play-Doh.
Here, another little boy is playing in the sandbox with his teacher. The teacher is using verbal imitation to prompt the boy to make a comment. The teacher knows the boy is having fun. He knows this because the boy is making happy noises. So, he prompts the boy to say, “This is fun!” He is also using motor imitation to show the boy different ways to play with some of the sand toys.