Play games with your baby that involve turn-taking, and give and take, such as "Peek-a-Boo” or “Pat-a-Cake”. Watch for times when your baby repeats these games or activities in new situations and with other people. Lukowski, A.F., Wiebe, S.A., Haight, J.C., DeBoer, T., Nelson, C.A., & Bauer, P.J. (2005). Forming a stable memory representation in the first year of life: Why imitation is more than child's play. Developmental Science, 8(3), 279-298. New Jersey Council for Young Children. (2013). New Jersey Birth to Three Early Learning Standards. Retrieved from https://www.nj.gov/education/ece/guide/standards/birth/standards.pdf
Memory in young children can be reinforced through imitation. A study found that although nine-month-old infants can retain temporally ordered information over long delays, this ability is relatively fragile.
Researchers have found that infants who were allowed to imitate had stronger memory representations of familiar stimuli relative to infants who only viewed the presentation of the events. In addition, infants who were allowed to imitate evidenced higher levels of ordered recall after one month relative to infants who only watched the experimenter's demonstration. Therefore, imitation proved to have beneficial effects on explicit memory in 9.5-month-olds, providing evidence of its effectiveness as a tool to augment mnemonic capabilities in infancy.