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“Watch me − This is how it should be done!” The effect of normative language on preschoolers’ overimitation occurs only in the lab but not at home

Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: • Children copied irrelevant actions equally at home and in the lab. • Normative language increased imitation—but only in the lab setting. • Normative cues had no effect on imitation in the home setting. • Findings support normative accounts of overimitation. • Results highlight how lab settings amplify social conformity in children. Preschoolers often imitate actions that are causally irrelevant, a phenomenon called “overimitation (OI)”. The present study examines how task context and language framing influence OI. A total of 160 four- to five-year-old German children from predominantly middle- to high-socioeconomic backgrounds participated in the study. All children performed the same OI task under four different conditions. They observed an adult model who demonstrated functional and non-functional actions before they themselves were allowed to retrieve a cookie from a transparent jar which could easily be opened by unscrewing the lid. This task was conducted either in a laboratory setting with an unfamiliar experimenter as model or at each child’s home with their caregiver as model. In both contexts, either a normative or a non-normative verbal instruction was used, resulting in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. OI scores were not significantly affected by framing or context alone. However, a significant interaction was found between the two factors: a normative language led to more OI in the lab-context, but did not affect OI-scores in the home context. Implications of these findings for children’s sensitivity to context conditions and language framing in observational learning are discussed.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106389
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,500
OpenAlex ID: W4415332943
FWCI:
Cites: 37
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