Rett syndrome is a congenital neurological syndrome, which in the classic phenotype only affects girls. The symptoms include lack of speech, stereotypic movements of hands, dyspraxia and mental retardation, and these symptoms lead to communicative impairments. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the intervention method Intensive Imitation affected interaction/communication and initiative in a girl with Rett syndrome. The design of the study was a Single Subject Experimental Design with a three-week long intervention period where the girl participated daily in 30- minute sessions of Intensive Imitation together with the test conductor. Interaction, communication and initiatives were observed and analyzed before (Baseline A), during and after (Baseline B) the intervention period. The results showed that the girl’s total amount of communicative contributions increased between Baseline A and Baseline B, especially regarding the amount of produced vocalizations. However, there were some variations in the amount of contributions during the entire period. The girl increased her eye gazing towards her communicative partner, especially during the intervention sessions. There were no increase in the amount of communicative initiatives between Baseline A and Baseline B. However, the amount of initiatives increased between the first and the last observation. Intensive Imitation had a positive effect on eye gazing, vocalizations and communicative contributions, but this study cannot show any stable improvement regarding the girl’s communication and interaction. / Rett syndrom är ett medfött neurologiskt syndrom som i den klassiska varianten enbart drabbar flickor. Till symtombilden hör avsaknad av tal, handstereotypier, dyspraxi och utvecklingsstörning som tillsammans innebär kommunikativa begränsningar för individen. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka om behandlingsmetoden Intensiv Imitation påverkade samspel/kommunikation och initiativförmåga hos en flicka med Rett syndrom. Studien utformades som en Single Subject Design och innehöll en tre veckor lång interventionsperiod där den deltagande flickan dagligen deltog i 30-minuterssessioner med Intensiv Imitation tillsammans med en testledare. Mätningar av samspel, kommunikation och initiativförmåga utfördes före (Baseline A), under och efter (Baseline B) interventionsperioden. Resultaten visade att flickans totala antal kommunikativa bidrag ökade mellan Baseline A och Baseline B, i synnerhet vad gällde antalet producerade ljud. Andelen ögonkontakt flickan sökte med sin samtalspartner var högre vid behandlingssessionerna än vid de vardagliga pedagogiska situationerna. Antalen initiativ ökade inte mellan Baseline A och Baseline B, men däremot uppvisades relativt stora variationer mellan den första och den sista observationen. Den Intensiva Imitationen har således haft en positiv påverkan på vissa kommunikativa beteenden hos den deltagande flickan, men studien har inte kunnat påvisa någon stabil förändring vad gäller hennes samspel/kommunikation och initiativförmåga.

While much research has explored the role of imitation in children’s learning of instrumental skills (Call et al., 2005; Carpenter et al., 2002; Gleissner et al., 2000; Lyons et al., 2007; Whiten et al., 2009), very little is known about the link between imitation and the acquisition of cultural conventional behavior. New research suggests that children rely on a variety of social and contextual cues when determining when to imitate with high or low fidelity and that these cues may reflect children’s interpretation of a task as either instrumental or conventional (Herrmann et al., 2013). Previous work examining children’s imitation has primarily used either unfamiliar, causally opaque object manipulation tasks (Herrmann et al., 2013) or complex instrumental tasks that make use of materials used in novel ways (Lyons et al., 2007; Williamson & Meltzoff, 2011), but research has yet to explore children’s imitation when presented with a causally accessible and familiar instrumental task. Drawing from an oft-observed classroom craft, the present study examined children’s reasoning about a necklace-making task when they were presented with either a conventional or an instrumental framing for the task and the cognitive consequences of this reasoning. / text

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The paper presents J. R. Fowles's novel "The French Lieutenants's Woman" as imitation and parody of Victorian novel.The epigraphs, duality of presentation and multiple endings of the novel, analyzed in the paper, made "The French Lieutenant's Woman" an uotstanding parody of the Victorian novel.