Imitation and development

…according to Vygotsky, imitation is the process through which socioculturally constructed forms of mediation are internalized… One of the earliest social scientist to propose imitation as a uniquely human form of development was James Mark Baldwin (1895/1915). For Baldwin, ‘imitation to the intelligent and earnest imitator is never slavish, never mere repetition; it is, on the contrary, a means for further ends, a method of absorbing what is present in others and of making it over in forms peculiar to one’s own genius’ (cited in Valsiner and van der Veer 2000: 153). Baldwin distinguished two forms of imitation, simple and persistent. Simple imitation is the best the individual can do and ‘does not include second attempts to improve the imitation’; thus the child continues to repeat the initial production without modification regardless of its similarity to the original model (ibid.). Persistent imitation, on the other hand, is intentional and goal-directed and entails cognitive activity; it is cyclic and reproductive in the sense that the individual continues to modify the reproduction in accordance with a mental image of the original (ibid.). Each reproductive cycle works on not on the original copy ‘but the previous imitation’ (ibid.). (Lantolf and Thorne, 2005, p. 166)