BRIEF REPORT RE-ENACTING INTENDED ACTS: COMPARING 12- AND 18-MONTH-OLDS Francesca Bellagamba Universita’ Degli Studi Di Roma “La Sapienza” Michael Tomasello Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, Germany The current study was a replication and extension of a study of infant imitative learning by Meltzoff (1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants in that study (and other 18-month-olds in the current study), the 12-month-olds in this study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions. Also, both 12- and 18-month-old infants reproduced actions more often when they observed the entire action and its result than when they observed the result only. imitation intentionality social cognition theory of mind Young children may learn from the behav- ior of other persons in a number of different ways. For example, they may simply mimic the surface behavior of another person without understanding what she is doing from an in- tentional point of view (Vygotsky, 1978). Or, conversely, they may observe and attempt to reproduce the external results produced by another person without paying any attention to the demonstrator’s behavior or intentions at all—what has been called emulation learning (Tomasello, 1996). The prototype of human cultural learning, however, occurs when chil- dren comprehend and attempt to reproduce another person’s intentional, goal-directed ac- tions, and so attend both to the result the other person produces and to the behavioral means she employs in pursuing this goal. Imitative learning of this type is necessary for children to acquire the conventional use of linguistic symbols and many other cultural artifacts (To- masello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993). ● Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Ger- many; e-mail: tomas@eva.mpg.de. INFANT BEHAVIOR & DEVELOPMENT 22 (2), 1999, 277–282 ISSN 0163-6383 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.