Observed shyness leads to more automatic imitation in early childhood
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The authors investigated children's automatic imitation in the context of observed shyness by adapting the widely used automatic imitation task (AIT). AIT performance in 6-year-old children (N = 38; 22 female; 71% White) and young adults (17-22 years; N = 122; 99 female; 32% White) was first examined as a proof of concept and to assess age-related differences in responses to the task (Experiment 1). Although error rate measures of automatic imitation were comparable between children and adults, children displayed less reaction time interference than adults. Children's shyness coded from direct behavioral observations was then examined in relation to AIT scores (Experiment 2). Observed shyness at 5 years old predicted higher automatic imitation one year later. We discuss the latter findings in the context of an adaptive strategy. We argue that shy children may possess a heightened sensitivity to others' motor cues and therefore are more likely to implicitly imitate social partners' actions. This tendency may serve as a strategy to signal appeasement and affiliation, allowing for shy children to blend in and feel less inhibited in a social environment.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".