Summary
This study examines whether children choose to retrieve one toy or two following watching a model who demonstrates a Redundant or Efficient way to get one toy out of the box. In an Explore condition, children are given the box and can explore how to get either one or two toys out of the box. Results show that children overimitate the actions in the Redundant condition, compared to the other two conditions. However, no pattern emerged for number of toys extracted from the box. Children in all conditions retrieved a similar number of toys.

This study was neatly designed and included a cross-cultural sample. The study posed an interesting question about whether children would or would not maximize their gain by not copying the model (in the Redundant and Efficient conditions), and whether children in the Explore condition would retrieve more toys (not hindered by whether to copy the model or not). However, I found it really difficult to interpret the results because the procedure and coding were not clear and the results should be rerun so that the behaviours of the children are clearer. My comments are below.

Abstract
The description of the results are not clear. By lesser reward, do you mean lower value or less in quantity?

Also, were there several trials? I’m not sure what the same number of rewards mean. These will become clearer with reading the text but the details aren’t clear here.

Introduction

I think more could be said on why you would expect children to maximize or not maximize their rewards. Is there other literature you could cite? You mention that the Bushman would be more likely to copy the model. What about the Australian sample? Why wouldn’t a WEIRD sample not want to maximize their rewards?

Pg 5. “immediate functional futility,”. Do you mean utility?

Methods
The procedure needs to be clearer. Were there two trials, e.g., two opportunities for a child to operate the apparatus and get toys? The coding and discussion sections talk about trials and I don’t see in the procedure that children got another opportunity. If they did, how was the box reloaded? Was it done out of view? Or were toys taken out and put back in?

Rewards: Was there a pilot test to determine whether children liked the rewards? Were all rewards equal in value (perhaps the single toy was more attractive than the other two toys?)

Coding of imitation: it’s not clear to me how this is calculated. What actions were coded and what is the highest score one could receive? How were multiple taps coded, (I can imagine some did exactly three, while others did either a few taps or more than three taps?)

Results
I don’t understand the rationale for the ANOVA’s for examining imitation and over-imitation. There is only one condition where children watch a model perform irrelevant actions. The children in other conditions do not witness this, so cannot imitate or overimitate any of the actions. In fact, it would be strange if children do these actions, if they had not seen them!

You could provide a table showing the frequency of actions performed per condition, but I don’t think analysis is warranted given that there shouldn’t be any expectation that other conditions over-imitate (having not seen a model demonstrate those actions).

The most important question your study has to answer is whether children choose one toy or two toys compared by condition. The question is whether children will choose to copy and receive one toy, or not copy and get two toys (in the Redundant Action or Efficient condition), and whether children figure out how to get one or two toys.

There are several ways to answer this.
I recommend looking at behaviour by trial first:
Which part of the box did children open on their first trial? (I’m assuming there are multiple trials, although still not sure?) The one with one toy or two?
And, what did children choose for their second? One or two toys?

Burdett et al. (2022) found that children sometimes switched on their second or subsequent trial. They concluded that children may have been exploring or trying to maximize their rewards. I would recommend looking at that paper for inspiration on how to analyse this data. Looking at the first trial is important to capture children’s initial behaviour.

The above analyses will help with understanding the result that there were no significant patterns for number of toy extraction across conditions. I wonder if in the first trial, children were more likely to copy the modelled action (for the Redundant and Efficient conditions). Then, on subsequent trials, try something new (similar to Burdett et al, 2022). And, in the Explore condition, I wonder if children tried both sides on both trials (so must children ended up with three toys, again assuming there were just two trials).

Considering the above, the discussion is premature as further analyses should be run to consider other reasons for children’s behaviour across trials.