Page "Imitation" Paragraph 3

Scholars as well as popular authors have argued that the role of imitation in humans is unique among animals.

Psychologist Kenneth Kaye showed that infants ' ability to match the sounds or gestures of an adult depends on an interactive process of turn-taking over many successive trials, in which adults ' instinctive behavior plays as great a role as that of the infant.

These writers assume that evolution would have selected imitative abilities as fit because those who were good at it had a wider arsenal of learned behavior at their disposal, including tool-making and language.