The Predisposition to Imitate
From YouTube AutotopiaLA
The underlying response predisposition is to imitate. It takes an act of inhibition to hold this primitive response in check.
From "The role of imitation in body ownership and mental growth," by Marcel Kinsbourne, in The imitative mind: Development, evolution, and brain bases.
In certain extreme situations, normal people act in ways that are more often used by people with neuropathology. What is anticipated in the imagination becomes overt when, in an impending traffic emergency, the front-seat passenger performs a vigorous braking movement. The urgency of the passenger's anticipatory image, of the driver applying the brakes, overcomes the usual inhibitory barrier between adult thought and action. When inhibition is not yet well developed, in the young child, or is compromised by brain dysfunction, such overflow occurs more often.
Brain lesions can make imitation more frequent, or they can impair it. Though it falls short when applied to normal cognition, the traditional stimulus-response psychology better characterizes people without the benefit of prefrontal cortical function. These are brain-damaged people, or infants. Bilateral prefrontal cortex lesions can release "echopraxia," which is unintended, automatic imitation. Lhermitte, Pillon, and Seradou (1986) have described pseudo-voluntary imitation, which the frontal patient attempts to rationalize if questioned. Frontal lesions characteristically make it difficult for the patient to restrain himself from imitating what the examiner does. For instance, the frontal patient has particular difficulty with the no-go instruction in a go/no-go reaction paradigm [we saw something similar here with neurotypicals too]. With the instruction systematically to move when the examiner moves, but in a contrasting way, the patient inadvertently breaks into the imitative mode. We learn that the underlying response predisposition is to imitate. It takes an act of inhibition to hold this primitive response in check. So the primitive response is imitative. Frontal control helps restrain it.
