“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
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...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
February 2026
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| In: |
Journal of experimental child psychology
Year: 2026, Volume: 262, Pages: 1-10 |
| ISSN: | 1096-0457 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106389 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106389 Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096525001961 
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| Author Notes: | Jule Bach, Sabina Pauen |
MARC
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| 520 | |a 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. | ||
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