Speech Science Forum 28th January - Carina de Klerk

Title: The development and modulation of mimicry in infancy and toddlerhood

Abstract: 

Humans have a tendency to spontaneously and unconsciously copy or ‘mimic’ others’ actions. This mimicry plays an important role in communication and affiliation, yet little is known about its development. In this talk I will present data from a longitudinal project that aimed to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting the development of facial mimicry from infancy to toddlerhood.

The dominant view on the neural basis of mimicry appeals to an automatic coupling between perception and action. One theory suggests that these couplings are formed through associative learning during correlated sensorimotor experience. The first two studies I will present provide support for this idea by showing that perceptual-motor couplings can be formed through observing one’s own actions and imitative social partners, and that they play a role in supporting mimicry behaviours. Although mimicry is often thought to be an automatic consequence of these perceptual-motor couplings, recent studies with adults have demonstrated that mimicry is flexibly modulated by social signals, such as eye contact, and social motivations, such as the desire to affiliate. I will present several studies that show that facial mimicry is modulated by social signals and social motivations in infancy and toddlerhood, suggesting that the foundations of mimicry’s role in social interaction and affiliation are present from early in life.