Mirror Neurons and Visuo-Motor Images in Children: A Meta-Analysis of Piaget and Inhelder's Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Using a meta-analysis of Piaget and Inhelder's (1966) data on static reproductive images, we examined the link between Piaget's theory of mental imagery and the motor cognition hypothesis (MCH), which reflects the functional aspect of the mirror neuron systems. We confirmed that reproduction of complex visual models mediated by visuo-motor images was facilitated much more by children's own activity than simple observation of either the model or someone else's reconstruction. Critically, the influence of imitation over the images did not change with children's age. Thus, as Piaget hypothesized, imagery may indeed have a very close relationship with imitation. However, lack of age effects shows that the type of imitation involved in visuo-motor imagery likely does not develop gradually, as predicted by Piaget, but rather it may be grounded on mirror neurons. The latter may be interpreted as the plausible biological substrate of accommodation, validating a cornerstone of Piaget's general theory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.040 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".