Why copy faithfully? Examining the role of social affiliation and norms understanding in preschoolers’ overimitation

Children engage in social learning, for example through overimitation, defined as copying clearly causally redundant actions. The goal of the current set of experiments was to identify the mechanisms underlying overimitation. We tested the social affiliation and normative theoretical accounts to determine whether one better predicts overimitation and examined how overimitation relates to other socio-cognitive abilities. In Experiment 1, 4.5-year-old children (n = 80) completed an overimitation task, an in-group preference task (social affiliation account) and a selective trust task. Parents completed questionnaires assessing their authoritarian parenting values (normative account) and their child’s theory of mind. Results indicated a link between overimitation and in-group preference, consistent with the social affiliation account, but parenting values and overimitation were unrelated. Previous research showing a dissociation between overimitation and both selective trust and theory of mind was replicated. To further explore the relation between overimitation and social affiliation, and to measure normative tendencies with a laboratory-based task, Experiment 2 tested 4-year-old children (n = 73). The same overimitation and in-group preference tasks were administered, as well as a task measuring normative protest. Results showed no significant association among tasks, suggesting that the link between overimitation and social affiliation appears only when children have developed stronger in-group preferences. Overall, the findings provide stronger support for the social affiliation account than the normative account, at least in 4.5-year-old children. To our knowledge, this is the first study to document an association between overimitation and social affiliation using a separate, direct measure of in-group preference. • Overimitation performance was linked to in-group preference by 4.5 years of age. • Parenting values of authoritarianism were not related to overimitation. • There was no link between performance on a normative rules task and overimitation. • Overimitation and selective trust were unrelated. • Present findings support the social affiliation over the normative account.