phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:4849 DOI 10.1037/dev0001798 Parental models and overimitation in 5-year-old children Individuals often copy another's causally irrelevant actions despite their inefficiency toward goals. The present study investigated the influence of model familiarity on this behavior-known as "overimitation"-with a two-phase overimitation task. We tested whether 5-year-old Austrian children (N = 52, 28 males) would overimitate their parents more than a stranger when operating a novel puzzle box. First, an inefficient strategy was demonstrated by a parent (or stranger) before the child's first turn on the box; then, an efficient strategy was demonstrated by a stranger (or parent) before the child's second turn. Results showed that children who first saw their parent's inefficient strategy overimitated it slightly more than those who saw the stranger's. After the efficient demonstration, we observed a reduction in children's overimitation of their parent's (but not the stranger's) inefficient strategy. Comparisons to a no-model (baseline) condition revealed significantly higher overimitation scores for our parent-then-stranger and stranger-then-parent conditions in the first phase, but only for the stranger-then-parent condition in the second phase. We also observed children protesting against their parents' efficient demonstration (in favor of the stranger's inefficient demonstration). These results suggest (a) that overimitation can occur in two ways (supporting a dual-process theory) and (b) that children selectively overimitate depending on model familiarity. eng Overimitation 5-year-old Children Parents Model Familiarity Social Learning 2026-02-03T09:19:48.327Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Mackie;Louise; FN:Louise Mackie X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6834-2987 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Eickhoff;Leslie-Ann; FN:Leslie-Ann Eickhoff END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Nimpf;Eluisa; FN:Eluisa Nimpf END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Huber;Ludwig; FN:Ludwig Huber X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0217-136X END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Hoehl;Stefanie; FN:Stefanie Hoehl END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 application/pdf 1291117 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:4849 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:4849/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline