PhD Oral Exam - Marilyne Dragon, Psychology

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Children start learning from others very early on in life, and social learning contributes to the transmission of knowledge, skills, and conventions specific to a social or cultural group. Crucial for the creation of a cumulative culture is overimitation, which is the tendency to copy causally irrelevant actions to achieve a particular goal. Although there has been much research on overimitation in recent years, it is still unclear what can best predict overimitation behavior. The aim of this dissertation was to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying overimitation in both infants and preschool-aged children. More specifically, we focused on the social affiliation and normative theoretical accounts of overimitation, as well as on overimitation’s potential associations with other forms of imitation and with selective trust. To do so, we conducted three experiments. In the first study, we examined overimitation in 18-month-old infants by comparing overimitation performance to two other forms of imitation, elicited imitation and unfulfilled intentions imitation, as well as to in-group preference. In the second study, we administered an overimitation task, an in-group preference task, and a selective trust task to 4.5-year-old preschoolers. Parents also completed questionnaires on parenting values of authoritarianism and on theory of mind. In the third experiment, we administered to 4-year-olds the same overimitation and in-group preference tasks as in the second study but also added a task assessing normative protest. Overall, we found a significant positive association between overimitation and in-group preference at 4.5 years of age, supporting the social affiliation theoretical perspective and adding to the existing literature by suggesting that overimitation can be related to a general tendency for preferring in-group members. We however found no evidence for the normative theoretical account, both when using a parent-report questionnaire and a laboratory task. Finally, we found that overimitation was not associated with other forms of imitation, nor with selective trust, suggesting that overimitation is a distinct social learning construct. Taken together, these results contribute to finding ways to improve children’s learning experiences and offer interesting directions for future research.