Human infant imitation as a social survival circuit

Human infants rapidly and effortlessly learn from other people. Imitation provides a direct avenue for transmitting information across generations, before language. Infants learn about people, objects, and themselves through imitation. A large body of behavioral experiments has provided insights about the development, functions, and psychological mechanisms underlying human infant imitation. Infants not only imitate other people, but also recognize when they are being imitated. Reciprocal imitation between infants and caregivers promotes interpersonal affiliation and bonding. New cognitive neuroscience research complements the behavioral work by providing evidence about infant cortical body maps. These body maps help explain how infants match the behaviors they see with their own corresponding bodily acts. Imitation is a distinctive channel for early human learning. It links human infants to their caregivers who are conduits of cultural information. Infant imitation serves as a social survival circuit with evolutionary roots and socio-cultural consequences.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

• Publication date

  2018-12-01

• Fields of study

  Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.COBEHA.2018.09.006
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• RUNNIG HEAD: BEYOND RATIONAL IMITATION Beyond rational imitation: Learning arbitrary means actions from communicative demonstrations

  2020cited by this paper
• Becoming Human

  2019influential reference
• Re-examination of Oostenbroek et al. (2016): evidence for neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion.

  2018cited by this paper
• Neural representations of the body in 60-day-old human infants.

  2018cited by this paper
• Somatotopic Mapping of the Developing Sensorimotor Cortex in the Preterm Human Brain

  2018cited by this paper
• Vocal learning: a language-relevant trait in need of a broad cross-species approach

  2018cited by this paper
• Infant brain responses to felt and observed touch of hands and feet: an MEG study.

  2018cited by this paper
• Social Learning and Culture in Child and Chimpanzee.

  2017cited by this paper
• Inter-Individual Differences in Vicarious Tactile Perception: a View Across the Lifespan in Typical and Atypical Populations.

  2017cited by this paper
• The Neurobiology of Human Attachments.

  2017cited by this paper
• Learning to make things happen: Infants' observational learning of social and physical causal events.

  2017cited by this paper
• “Catching” Social Bias

  2017cited by this paper
• The infant motor system predicts actions based on visual statistical learning☆

  2017cited by this paper
• Testing the arousal hypothesis of neonatal imitation in infant rhesus macaques

  2017cited by this paper
• Early patterns of activity in the developing cortex: Focus on the sensorimotor system.

  2017cited by this paper
• Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

  2017cited by this paper
• Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants

  2017cited by this paper
• Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

  2017cited by this paper
• Infants make more attempts to achieve a goal when they see adults persist

  2017cited by this paper
• Human infants’ understanding of social imitation: Inferences of affiliation from third party observations

  2016cited by this paper
• Motor System Activation Predicts Goal Imitation in 7-Month-Old Infants

  2016cited by this paper
• Assessing human mirror activity with EEG mu rhythm: A meta-analysis.

  2016cited by this paper
• Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning.

  2015cited by this paper
• A Bayesian Developmental Approach to Robotic Goal-Based Imitation Learning

  2015cited by this paper
• Developmental Robotics: From Babies to Robots

  2015cited by this paper
• Mimicry: causes and consequences

  2015cited by this paper
• Becoming a high-fidelity - super - imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

  2015cited by this paper
• Body maps in the infant brain.

  2015cited by this paper
• An Evaluation of Imitation Recognition Abilities in Typically Developing Children and Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

  2015cited by this paper
• Neural body maps in human infants: Somatotopic responses to tactile stimulation in 7-month-olds

  2015cited by this paper
• Infant, Control Thyself: Infants' Integration of Multiple Social Cues to Regulate Their Imitative Behavior.

  2014cited by this paper
• The mirror neuron system as revealed through neonatal imitation: presence from birth, predictive power and evidence of plasticity

  2014cited by this paper
• Learning to imitate individual finger movements by the human neonate.

  2014cited by this paper
• Development of Human Somatosensory Cortical Functions – What have We Learned from Magnetoencephalography: A Review

  2014cited by this paper
• The Infant EEG Mu Rhythm: Methodological Considerations and Best Practices.

  2014cited by this paper
• The neural basis of somatosensory remapping develops in human infancy.

  2014cited by this paper
• Neural mirroring mechanisms and imitation in human infants

  2014cited by this paper
• How and why do infants imitate? An ideomotor approach to social and imitative learning in infancy (and beyond)

  2014cited by this paper
• A Meta‐Analysis of Imitation Abilities in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders

  2014cited by this paper
• Selective imitation of in-group over out-group members in 14-month-old infants.

  2013cited by this paper
• Imitation of tongue protrusion in human neonates: specificity of the response in a large sample.

  2013cited by this paper
• Being mimicked increases prosocial behavior in 18-month-old infants.

  2013cited by this paper
• Effects of Seeing and Hearing Vowels on Neonatal Facial Imitation

  2013cited by this paper
• Infants’ Somatotopic Neural Responses to Seeing Human Actions: I’ve Got You under My Skin

  2013cited by this paper
• Imitation : Social , Cognitive , andTheoretical Perspectives

  2013cited by this paper
• Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach

  2012cited by this paper
• Rethinking the emotional brain.

  2012influential reference
• Neural correlates of being imitated: An EEG study in preverbal infants

  2012cited by this paper
• Learning about causes from people: observational causal learning in 24-month-old infants.

  2012cited by this paper
• Children's imitation of causal action sequences is influenced by statistical and pedagogical evidence.

  2011cited by this paper
• The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation

  2011cited by this paper
• Neural correlates of action observation and execution in 14-month-old infants: an event-related EEG desynchronization study.

  2011cited by this paper
• The reliability of a model influences 14-month-olds' imitation.

  2010cited by this paper
• Motor System Activation Reveals Infants’ On-Line Prediction of Others’ Goals

  2010cited by this paper
• Somatosensation in social perception

  2010cited by this paper
• Just do it? Investigating the gap between prediction and action in toddlers' causal inferences.

  2010cited by this paper
• 2010 Special Issue: Social robots are psychological agents for infants: A test of gaze following

  2010cited by this paper
• Observing touch activates human primary somatosensory cortex

  2010cited by this paper
• Foundations for a New Science of Learning

  2009cited by this paper
• Judicious imitation: children differentially imitate deterministically and probabilistically effective actions.

  2008cited by this paper
• 'Like me': a foundation for social cognition.

  2007cited by this paper
• The evolution of cultural evolution

  2003cited by this paper
• Development of the EEG from 5 months to 4 years of age.

  2002cited by this paper
• Developmental psychology: Rational imitation in preverbal infants

  2002cited by this paper
• Long-term memory, forgetting, and deferred imitation in 12-month-old infants.

  1999cited by this paper
• Origins of theory of mind, cognition and communication.

  1999cited by this paper
• Fourteen-through 18-month-old infants di eren-tially imitate intentional and accidental actions

  1998cited by this paper
• Explaining Facial Imitation: A Theoretical Model.

  1997cited by this paper
• Infant vocalizations in response to speech: vocal imitation and developmental change.

  1996cited by this paper
• Central reorganization of sensory pathways following peripheral nerve regeneration in fetal monkeys

  1996cited by this paper
• Understanding the Intentions of Others: Re-Enactment of Intended Acts by 18-Month-Old Children.

  1995cited by this paper
• Imitation, Memory, and the Representation of Persons.

  1994cited by this paper
• Infant Imitation After a 1-Week Delay: Long-Term Memory for Novel Acts and Multiple Stimuli.

  1988cited by this paper
• Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures

  1983cited by this paper
• Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Neural Mirroring Systems: Exploring the Eeg Mu Rhythm in Human Infancy

  year unknowninfluential reference

• Does parent social emotional competence predict the social emotional competence of their children?

  2026cites this paper
• Infants' sensitivity to the predictability of exchanged actions in socially contingent exchanges: the contingency cube.

  2026cites this paper
• Neural signals gradually shift towards inferior frontal gyrus and long-term effects following facial imitation-based social learning

  2025cites this paper
• The infant neural mirroring system: A quarter-century in review.

  2025cites this paper
• Neonatal mimicry of caregivers at home: feasibility of an asynchronous online paradigm

  2025cites this paper
• La socialización de los valores culturales y el desarrollo de la prosocialidad latinoamericana

  2025cites this paper
• Augmenting outdated museum exhibits with embodied and tangible interactions for prolonged use and learning enhancement

  2025cites this paper
• The Socialization of Cultural Values and the Development of Latin American Prosociality

  2025cites this paper
• Infants can create iconic gestures during natural interactions with caregivers

  2025cites this paper
• Samoocena i kompetencje komunikacyjne studentek pedagogiki w świetle wymiarów komunikacji w rodzinie

  2025cites this paper
• Neural and motor coupling in interpersonal synchronization: mechanisms for motor learning and development in 5- to 6-year-old children

  2025cites this paper
• Level of autistic traits in neurotypical adults predicts kinematic idiosyncrasies in their biological movements

  2024cites this paper
• Dynamic Emotion Recognition and Expression Imitation in Neurotypical Adults and Their Associations with Autistic Traits

  2024cites this paper
• The Contributions of the Bodily Senses to Body Representations in the Brain

  2024cites this paper
• The effects of ostracism on preschoolers' over-imitation behaviors.

  2024cites this paper
• Cognitive and social dynamics of over-imitation in early childhood: a dual-process perspective

  2024cites this paper
• Causal involvement of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in learning the predictability of observable actions

  2024cites this paper
• Emerging Adults Mirror Infants' Emotions and Yawns.

  2024cites this paper
• National disparities favoring males are reflected in girls' implicit associations about gender and academic subjects.

  2024cites this paper
• The development of human causal learning and reasoning

  2024cites this paper
• Decoding the spatiotemporal dynamic neural representation of repetitive facial expression imitation

  2024cites this paper
• Prosociality in young Latinx children: Exploring the role of grandparents.

  2023cites this paper
• Culturally-attuned AI: Implicit learning of altruistic cultural values through inverse reinforcement learning

  2023cites this paper
• Prenatal Zika virus infection has sex-specific effects on infant physical development and mother-infant social interactions

  2023cites this paper
• Protracted development of motor cortex constrains rich interpretations of infant cognition.

  2023cites this paper
• In Search of a Neural Model for Serial Order: A Brain Theory for Memory Development and Higher Level Cognition

  2022cites this paper
• Lessons from infant learning for unsupervised machine learning

  2022cites this paper
• Reaction time coupling in a joint stimulus-response task: A matter of functional actions or likable agents?

  2022cites this paper
• Co-regulation and parenting stress over time in full-term, very low birthweight preterm, and psycho-socially at-risk infant-mother dyads: Implications for fostering the development of healthy relationships.

  2022cites this paper
• Mother-infant co-regulation from 0 to 2 years: The role of copy behaviors. A systematic review.

  2022cites this paper
• Two modes of being together: The levels of intersubjectivity and human relatedness in neuroscience and psychoanalytic thinking

  2022cites this paper
• Who to Observe and Imitate in Humans and Robots: The Importance of Motivational Factors

  2022cites this paper
• Early motor copying behaviours: analysis of their functions and relationship with language

  2021cites this paper
• Die frühe Kindheit – Sehen, Denken und Tun

  2021cites this paper
• 3-4-year-old children’s memory flexibility allows adaptation to an altered context

  2021cites this paper
• Neural Mechanisms of Observational Learning: A Neural Working Model

  2021cites this paper
• Human infants can override possessive tendencies to share valued items with others

  2021cites this paper
• Infant Speech Perception

  2021cites this paper
• Exploring developmental changes in infant anticipation and perceptual processing: EEG responses to tactile stimulation.

  2021cites this paper
• Facial mimicry in the congenitally blind.

  2021cites this paper
• Language and Movement Synchronization in Dyadic Psychotherapeutic Interaction – A Qualitative Review and a Proposal for a Classification

  2021influential citation
• Towards a Neural Model for Serial Order in Frontal Cortex: a Brain Theory from Memory Development to Higher-Level Cognition

  2020cites this paper
• INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Acquiring Group Bias: Observing Other People’s Nonverbal Signals Can Create Social Group Biases

  2020cites this paper
• Motor Cortical Activity during Observing a Video of Real Hand Movements versus Computer Graphic Hand Movements: An MEG Study

  2020cites this paper
• Acquiring group bias: Observing other people's nonverbal signals can create social group biases.

  2020cites this paper
• Mother-Infant Face-to-Face Intermodal Discrepancy and Risk

  2020cites this paper
• Enhancing same-gender imitation by highlighting gender norms in Chinese pre-school children.

  2020cites this paper
• Action imitation via trajectory-based or posture-based planning

  2020cites this paper
• Importance of body representations in social-cognitive development: New insights from infant brain science.

  2020cites this paper
• Preschoolers' Motivation to Over-Imitate Humans and Robots.

  2020cites this paper
• Intention to imitate: Top-down effects on 4-year-olds’ neural processing of others’ actions

  2020cites this paper
• Neonatal Participation in Neonatal Imitation: Narrative in Newborn Dialogues

  2020cites this paper
• The Braid of Human Learning and Development

  2020influential citation
• Body representation in infants: Categorical boundaries of body parts as assessed by somatosensory mismatch negativity

  2020influential citation
• Imitation in Chinese Preschool Children: Influence of Prior Self-Experience and Pedagogical Cues on the Imitation of Novel Acts in a Non-Western Culture

  2020influential citation
• Body maps in the infant brain: implications for neurodevelopmental disabilities

  2020cites this paper
• Overimitation of Children With Cochlear Implants or Hearing Aids in Comparison With Children With Normal Hearing

  2020influential citation
• The Pacified Face: Early Embodiment Processes and the Use of Dummies

  2020cites this paper
• Do Humans Imitate Robots? An Investigation of Strategic Social Learning in Human-Robot Interaction

  2020cites this paper
• Interpersonal Neural Entrainment during Early Social Interaction.

  2020cites this paper
• Enhanced Gaze Following Behavior in Deaf Infants of Deaf Parents.

  2019cites this paper
• Learning target reaching motions with a robotic arm using brain-inspired dopamine modulated STDP

  2019cites this paper
• Development of social learning and play in BaYaka hunter-gatherers of Congo

  2019cites this paper
• Neonatal imitation: Temporal characteristics in imitative response patterns.

  2019cites this paper
• A Cognition-Affect Integrated Model of Emotion

  2019cites this paper
• Developing Minds in the Digital Age

  2019cites this paper
• A neuroimaging perspective on the emotional sleepy brain

  2019cites this paper
• Interpersonal Influences on Body Representations in the Infant Brain

  2018cites this paper