Imitation in Infancy

TLDR

Imitation likely comprises multiple mechanisms that develop over the first two years, rather than a single competency. Parents modeled up to three minutes of four of eight behaviors and encouraged imitation, and researchers compared infants’ production rates during modeled and non‑modeled behaviors to estimate the age at which each behavior was mimicked. Infants did not mimic any behaviors at 6 months, and mimicry emerged gradually during the second year at behavior‑specific ages, suggesting that newborn behavioral matching is not continuous with later infant mimicry.

Abstract

Parents of 162 infants ages 6 to 20 months modeled subsets of four of the same set of eight behaviors, each for a maximum of 3 min, and encouraged their infants to imitate. Proportions of infants producing each behavior (a) when it was modeled and (b) during modeling of a different behavior were compared to estimate the age at which infants mimicked each kind of behavior. No reproduction of these motor acts—that is, no mimicry—was observed at 6 months. Mimicry appeared to develop slowly through most of the 2nd year, emerging at different ages for different behaviors. The findings suggest that newborns' behavioral matching may not be continuous with mimicry later in infancy. Imitation is probably not one behavioral competency with one underlying mechanism. It is more likely a category of different ways of combining and using different types of knowledge, some of which develop across the first 2 years of life.