Observational learning[edit]
Main article: Observational learning
The learning process most characteristic of humans is imitation; one's personal repetition of an observed behavior, such as a dance. Recent research[citation needed] with children has shown that observational learning is well suited to seeding behaviors that can spread widely across a culture through a process called a diffusion hain, where individuals initially learn a behavior by observing another individual perform that behavior, and then serve as a model from which other individuals learn the behavior. Humans can copy three types of information simultaneously: the demonstrator's goals, actions, and environmental outcomes (results, see Emulation (observational learning)). Through copying these types of information, (most) infants will tune into their surrounding culture. Humans aren't the only creatures capable of learning through observing. A wide variety of species learn by observing. In one study, for example, pigeons watched other pigeons set reinforced for either pecking at the feeder or stepping on a bar. When placed in the box later, the pigeons tended to use whatever technique they had observed other pigeons using earlier.(Zentall, Sutton & Sherburne, 1996)[full citation needed]
Observational learning involves a neural component as well. Mirror neurons, then, may play a critical role in the imitation of behavior as well as the prediction of future behavior. (Rizzolatti,2004)[full citation needed] Mirror neurons are thought to be represented in specific subregions in the frontal and partietal lobes, and there is evidence that individual subregions respond most strongly to observing certain kinds of actions.