ROAD TO EXCELLENCE SERIES

Imitation is often seen as one of the crucial foundations of culture because it is the basis of social learning and social transmission. Only by imitating others and learning from them did human culture become cumulative, allowing humans to build and improve on the knowledge of previous generations. Thus, it may be one of the key cognitive specializations that sparked the success of the human evolutionary story: Much of the success of our species rests on our ability to learn from others’ actions. From the simplest preverbal communication to the most complex adult expertise, a remarkable proportion of our abilities are learned by imitating those around us. Imitation is a critical part of what makes us cognitively human and generally constitutes a significant advantage over our primate relatives (Lyons et al. 2007: 19751). Today if we look at the young students (Generation Y ), they lack the motivation because they just don’t have much of the reference points to consider in front of them which is contextual or contemporary or relevant to them to struggle, slog and become successful. They get frustrated easily with their initial failures and cannot judge or compare their own capabilities, neither they’ve knowledge about the root cause of the failures, hence they lack self confidences. They need more of living heroes and some local characters in front of them with whom they can relate themselves on an immediate basis and follow their footsteps knowingly or unknowingly. This is known as cognitive imitating explained by Lyons et al. Hence, we have framed this program which would essentially benefit the students, researchers and our faculties.