The development of imitation in infancy

An overview of existing data on imitation in infancy suggests that changes in the direction of imitation research are underway. The widely accepted view that newborn infants imitate lacks supporting evidence. Instead, existing data suggest that infants do not imitate others until their second year,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2009-08, Vol.364 (1528), p.2325-2335
Main Author: Jones, Susan S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior modeling
Brain - growth & development
Brain - physiology
Child Development - physiology
Cognition - physiology
Dynamic Systems
Empirical evidence
Gestures
Human Development
Humans
Imitation
Imitative Behavior - physiology
Infancy
Infant
Infant Behavior - physiology
Infants
Memory
Mirror neurons
Mouth
Newborns
Observational learning
Reviews
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Summary:An overview of existing data on imitation in infancy suggests that changes in the direction of imitation research are underway. The widely accepted view that newborn infants imitate lacks supporting evidence. Instead, existing data suggest that infants do not imitate others until their second year, and that imitation of different kinds of behaviour emerges at different ages. The evidence is consistent with a dynamic systems account in which the ability to imitate is not an inherited, specialized module, but is instead the emergent product of a system of social, cognitive and motor components, each with its own developmental history.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2009.0045