Why do we teach matching and imitation?

When new clients start therapy with big goals in mind, such as their child dressing themselves, or using the toilet, we often get asked why we want to teach their child little skills such as imitation on matching. The answer, put simply, is that these skills are stepping stones for learning other skills!

Imitation, that is, copying what another person has done, is one of the earliest skills a child learns, and it’s important for acquiring more complex behaviours. Imitation is what we call a behavioural cusp skill. Once learned, imitation allows a child to access additional and previously unavailable learning opportunities. It helps children learn appropriate behaviours through observation and replication and can be a precursor to more advanced forms of learning and behaviour.

Here's a few examples of how learning to imitate can help a child learn other skills:

Learning through modelling: We can teach new skills to children using what we call model prompts, that is, showing the learner how to do something. If a child can imitate, they can copy what we’ve done. This reduces the need for more intrusive kinds of prompts, like physical prompting. 

Social interaction: Imitation is a fundamental social skill. Being able to imitate others helps children learn to connect with their peers and caregivers, fostering social relationships and communication. Plus, imitating what peers are doing can help children learn a range of other skills, like what to do in the classroom, for example. 

Language development: Many language skills are learned through imitation. Teaching imitation can help children learn new words, phrases, and even complex sentences by modelling the speech and gestures of others.

Generalisation: Teaching imitation can help children generalize learned behaviours to new situations and settings. Once a child learns to imitate a behaviour in one context, they can transfer that skill to similar situations.

Reduction of problem behaviours: Teaching appropriate imitation skills can also indirectly reduce problem behaviours. As children learn more functional and adaptive behaviours through imitation, they may be less likely to engage in challenging or inappropriate behaviours.

So, we can see how learning the skill of imitation can be so important for children to learn. Let’s look back at those big skills of a child dressing themselves. We can now model how to put a jumper on, rather than physically guiding this. 

How about matching? Initially when we teach a child to match, we start with matching identical objects, which may seem simple and sometimes pointless. We progressively make the matching skills more advanced, like matching similar looking items, or matching by other modalities like smell or touch. Matching is an important skill to learn as we actually use matching skills all the time, and you may not even know it! For example, matching skills are often necessary for daily living tasks. When we put clothes away, we match the different types of clothes to go away with each other, or we match the pairs of socks. We can use matching to sort objects and identify items in the environment.

Once we teach more advanced stages of matching, the skill helps to develop cognitive skills such as categorisation, discrimination, and visual perception. These skills are foundational for understanding relationships between objects and concepts.

Matching also helps with pre-academic skills. Understanding relationships between items and recognising patterns are essential components of many academic tasks. Matching lays the groundwork for more advanced academic skills such as reading, math, and problem-solving.

Whilst teaching your child matching and imitation may seem like your goals aren’t quite being worked on, developmental milestones are, and stepping stones towards your big goals are underway!