In this article, I shall discuss the principles of the theory of imitation by learning how to sign my first name in the American Sign Language. The first theory at play is the theory of imitation as an instinct. In this theory, imitation is considered as a primitive sense that does not involve learning something new. In my case, making the hand gestures is something I was familiar with. I, however, learned how to coordinate the movements to create a complete sentence. This is something I consider new; thus, imitation can lead to new skills. This is a substantial limitation of the theory of emulation as an instinct.
The second theory is imitation as an operant response. In this theory, imitation is based on the occurrence of copying as being a reinforced stimulus. The doctrine applies since I had to watch the demonstration a few times for me to learn. I, however, feel the argument falls short in that it does not account for personal variations such as learning ability where some people can learn quicker than others, hence no need for reinforcing it. I am sure some people can learn the skill faster than others.
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Another theory is the theory of imitation as a generalized operant response. It is similar to the approach of operant response; the only difference is that it is based on learning other actions after exposure to other related activities. My little task conforms to the theory in that I never knew some of my common hand gestures were symbols in the American sign language, thus, learning the skill was relatively easy. However, the theory’s limitation is that not all actions can be generalized. For example, the letter “N” was relatively hard to learn, and cannot be a general skill.
Finally, we look at bandura’s theory of imitation. It expounds more into the argument of generalized operant response. In my activity, the theory’s crucial four factors were all put into practice since I had to concentrate to learn the skill, then retain what I saw, have the ability to practice after which I reproduced the results. I find no limitation to this theory.
Based on the above discussion, I consider Bandura’s theory of imitation to be all-around as compared to the other approaches hence more compliant to my activity as mentioned earlier. This is because it accommodates all the processes I went through before learning the skill. I first had to concentrate to gain, after which I memorized what I saw. This was followed by the practice which resulted in me learning the skill.
