WiseTip: CD-PLY-M0009-G01A

Cognitive Development

Promoting Imitation & Symbolic Play

During caregiving routines, such as bathtime or during a diaper change, occasionally imitate your baby's gestures and actions. Watch to see if your baby imitates you. Then, repeat and modify your baby's action, and see if your baby imitates that too.

WHY IT MATTERS

Researchers have posited that mirroring back behaviour is emotionally pleasing to infants and facilitates further communication.

Meltzoff, A.N. (1999) Born to Learn: What Infants Learn from Watching Us in N. Fox & J.G. Worhol (Eds.), The Role of Early Experience in Infant Development, Skillman, NJ: Paediatric Institute Publications, 1999.

This to-and-fro imitative interaction promotes communication and builds bonds between the adult and child.

Recent studies have found that imitation is not an innate behaviour but one that is learned in babies' first months. One possibility is that babies learn to imitate other people by watching other people imitate them. Another study from the same lab found that parents imitate their babies once every two minutes on average. Hence, adults imitating babies could be a powerful means by which infants learn to link their gestures with those of another person.

Oostenbroek, J., Suddendorf, T., Nielsen,M., Redshaw,J., Kennedy-Costantini, S., Davis,J., Clark,V., Slaughter,V. (2016). Comprehensive Longitudinal Study Challenges the Existence of Neonatal Imitation in Humans. Current Biology.