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Which Relevant Information Do Preschoolers and Scholars Perceive and Select for Imitating a Series of Walking Movements

Lazhar Labiadh, Marie-Martine Ramanantsoa and Mounir Landolsi

Background: Imitation is commonly considered as a hierarchically organized mechanism. It is frequently used to explore various scientific researches, but few works had studied the imitation of locomotion movements. Objectives: The current study aimed at investigating what information children of different age groups select and integrate for performing a series of locomotion movements. Methodology: One hundred and thirty children from 3.5 to 7.5 years of age were separately instructed to walk on and between the obstacles in different imitation forms following gestural demonstration, and in a control condition following verbal instructions. The children’s performances were videotaped, coded in binary data, and then transformed in percentage scores. Results: All children performed the modeled walking movements, but did not necessarily do so with the same step-alternating modes or footedness. The model helped the preschoolers to adopt his step-alternating modes and stabilized the schoolers above 5.5 years of age. The disparity of the children’s walking performances was due to the priority to imitate the movement goal rather its aspects. Conclusion: These findings well confirmed that imitation is a hierarchically organized mechanism.