M. Keith Moore

Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures.

Newborn infants ranging in age from 0.7 to 71 hours old were tested for their ability to imitate 2 adult facial gestures: mouth opening and tongue protrusion. Each subject acted as his or her own control in a repeated-measures design counterbalanced for order of stimulus presentation. The subjects were tested in low illumination using infrared-sensitive video equipment. The videotaped records were scored by an observer who was uninformed about the gesture shown to the infants. Both frequency and duration of neonatal mouth openings and tongue protrusions were tallied. The results showed that newborn infants can imitate both adult displays. 3 possible mechanisms underlying this early imitative behavior are suggested: instrumental or associative learning, innate releasing mechanisms, and active intermodal matching. It is argued that the data favor the third account.

Imitation in newborn infants: exploring the range of gestures imitated and the underlying mechanisms

This study evaluated the psychological mechanisms underlying imitation of facial actions in young infants. A novel aspect of the study was that it used a nonoral gesture that had not been tested before (head movement), as well as a tongue-protrusion gesture. Results showed imitation of both displays. Imitation was not limited to the intervals during which the experimenters movements were displayed; Ss also imitated from memory after the display had stopped. The results established that newborn imitation is not constrained to a few privileged oral movements. The findings support Meltzoff and Moores hypothesis that early imitation is mediated by an active cross-modal matching process. A common representational code may unite the perception and production of basic human acts.

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons☆☆☆

Imitation was tested both immediately and after a 24-hr retention interval in 6-week-old infants. The results showed immediate imitation, which replicates past research, and also imitation from memory, which is new. The latter finding implicates recall memory and establishes that 6-week-olds can generate actions on the basis of stored representations. The motor organization involved in imitation was investigated through a microanalysis of the matching response. Results revealed that infants gradually modified their behavior towards more accurate matches over successive trials. It is proposed that early imitation serves a social identity function. Infants are motivated to imitate after a 24-hr delay as a means of clarifying whether the person they see before them is the same one they previously encountered. They use the reenactment of a persons behavior to probe whether this is the same person. In the domain of inanimate objects, infants use physical manipulations (e.g., shaking) to perform this function. Imitation is to understanding people as physical manipulation is to understanding things. Motor imitation, the behavioral reenactment of things people do, is a primitive means of understanding and communicating with people.

Visual tracking in young infants: Evidence for object identity or object permanence? ☆

Abstract Previous research has shown that 5-month-old infants visually anticipate a moving objects appearance after it disappears behind a screen. This experiment assesses the underlying basis for such anticipatory tracking. Three tracking tasks were presented to 5- and 9-month-old infants. In the Permanence task, the objects continuous existence was apparently violated while it was behind a screen. In the Feature and Trajectory tasks, the objects features or trajectory changed while behind the screen. Disruptions in the infants smooth visual pursuit of the object were recorded. Five-mont-olds showed disruptions of visual tracking in the Feature and Trajectory tasks, but not in the Permanence task. The tracking of the 9-month-olds was disrupted in all three tasks. We conclude that both 5- and 9-month-olds possess rules specifying the identity of a moving object which is occluded. For 5-month-olds these rules are based upon the objects features and trajectory, but not upon a concept of object permanence. For 9-month-olds all three rules—feature, trajectory, and permanence—are utilized in visual tracking.

Object Permanence After a 24-Hr Delay and Leaving the Locale of Disappearance: The Role of Memory, Space, and Identity

Fourteen-month-old infants saw an object hidden inside a container and were removed from the disappearance locale for 24 hr. Upon their return, they searched correctly for the hidden object, demonstrating object permanence and long-term memory. Control infants who saw no disappearance did not search. In Experiment 2, infants returned to see the container either in the same or a different room. Performance by room-change infants dropped to baseline levels, suggesting that infant search for hidden objects is guided by numerical identity. Infants seek the individual object that disappeared, which exists in its original location, not in a different room. A new behavior, identity-verifying search, was discovered and quantified. Implications are drawn for memory, spatial understanding, object permanence, and object identity.

Why Faces are Special to Infants — on Connecting the Attraction of Faces and Infants’ Ability for Imitation and Cross-Modal Processing

There is more to faces than meets the eye. Infants can see the faces of others, but can also feel their own faces move. We propose a cross-modal hypothesis about why faces are attractive and meaningful to infants. According to this view, faces are attention-getting in part because they look like infants’ own felt experiences. This cross-modal correspondence drives not only visual attention but also action. Infants produce facial acts they see others perform. We here report an experiment on the efficacy of mothers versus strangers in eliciting facial imitation. The development of imitation is also investigated. The results show that there is no disappearance or “drop out” of imitation in early infancy; however, infants develop social expectations about face-to-face interaction that sometimes supersede imitation. Special procedures are required to motivate imitative responding in the 2- to 3-month age range. A theory is proposed about the motivation and functional significance of early facial imitation. According to this theory early imitation subserves a social identity function. Infants treat the facial behaviors of people as identifiers of who they are and use imitative reenactments as a means of verifying the identity of people. Facial imitation and the neural bases of the multimodal representation of faces provide interesting problems in developmental cognitive neuroscience.