Association between imitation recognition and imitation performance in typically developing children

Abstract

This project is about Imitation recognition and imitation performance in typically developing children aged 12 to 17 months and 54 to 59 months. The objectives of the study were to explore the association between imitation recognition and imitation performance and how they influence one another. In the study, we obtained measurements from 136 children on various ordinal variables. These observations were registered, by two observers independently, 30 seconds within imitation recognition and 30 seconds to the end of the study. About 20% of the planned measurements 30 seconds to the endof the study were not registered due to unwillingness of some children to cooperate in the exercise. Thus, a reflective analysis could not be obtained from this portion of data. Also, results based on weighted kappa indicate that there is satisfactory agreement between the measurements on Imitation Recognition (IR) from both observers. Consequently, only measurements from the first observer will be used in the analysis. Methods for censored data were employed due to the time-to-event nature of the data, Kaplan Meier curves and frequency tables were used to explore the data with respect to Imitation recognition (IR). Cox proportional hazard models were employed to investigate the association between imitation recognition and imitation. The forward, backward and stepwise variable selection techniques were used for variable reduction in the model building process. The final model was formed by a union of all variables in the various final automatic models and reducing the model based on Likelihood ratio test. The Cox models indicate that the ability for a child to exhibit imitation recognition increases with increase in n KIRaanhouden30sec and KIRsociaalkijken30sec. Also, the proportional hazards assumption seemed plausible for the data and the deviance residuals indicated that the model had an acceptable fit on the individual observations.