My name is Christa Griffith, and I am currently a senior Communication Sciences and Disorders major entering my last semester of my research. My research mentor is Dr. Kimberly Frazier who is a professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program. When I first began my research in the spring of 2019, I intended to conduct a study that would analyze responses to a test of over-imitation. Specifically, the responses of individuals who have Autism Spectrum Disorder and those who are neurotypical. This concept piqued my interest because it frankly seemed like an odd thing to do. Over-imitation is the act of copying a behavior to such a high degree that the behavior becomes less efficient. For example, we all know how to open a water bottle. You simply twist the cap, bring the bottle to your mouth, and drink from it. Imagine for a minute that you never learned how to use a water bottle. I walk up to you with a water bottle in hand. I toss it in the air, catch it, spin it around a couple times, twist the cap, bring the bottle to my mouth, and then drink from it. I offer you the bottle and because you have never used one before you copy all of my previous actions. You would have demonstrated over-imitation. Several of the actions I conducted were unnecessary to completing the task of drinking out of the water bottle. You wasted a lot of energy doing all of the extra theatrics when you could have just twisted the cap and drank.

I have spent the last two semesters gathering background information and preparing to conduct the study. This would require recruitment that would have been aided by the Honor College Research Grant. However, due to COVID-19 the plans had to be changed. Although, I was unable to conduct my study I am hopeful that the research and preparation that I have done will allow me to pursue this avenue further in my graduate studies if possible. The goal now for my research is to deeply analyze the theories behind over-imitation in primates.

So far, I have discovered that there are two main reasons why an individual might over-imitate. One being social motivation and the other social cognition. The social motivation reason is that individuals will over-imitate in order to comply with the social norms of the situation. They do not want to do anything out of the ordinary so they copy every single action no matter how unnecessary it may seem. The social cognition reason is that individuals over-imitate because they genuinely believe that all the actions are necessary to complete the task. One of the challenges I have faced in this research is that there is not a lot of information about how adults respond to over-imitation tasks. My study’s target group was college-age students and I think it would be fascinating to know how these individuals would respond when their social communication is tested. One thing I have learned through this research is how powerful our social environment is. I have found that it is incredibly easy for our brain to override what is logical to conform to a social norm.