The temporal architecture of imitative interaction during the first three months of life

How we understand newborn children’s social capacity is central to our understanding of how the mind develops.

The ability of the newborn child to imitate is one early capacity that have influenced our understanding of how children relate to people.

This capacity has had a strong impact on theories of early development although the scientific underpinnings have also been questioned.

A recent Swedish study (Heimann & Tjus, 2019) reported renewed support for neonatal imitation and in addition found that the temporal organization of the infants’ responses influenced if imitation was observed or not.Here, we will map through computational analysis (machine learning) the temporal structure of neonatal imitation in video recordings that stem from previous Swedish experimental studies.

We will investigate if neonatal imitation can be understood as part of the narrative response pattern infants use when interacting with a person: This pattern consists of four phases: introduction, development, climax, and resolution.

We expect successful imitation to be associated with this communicative pattern while unsuccessful imitative attempts will not.The study will provide unique data – nothing similar has been published yet – that will enable us to explain how responses used as evidence for neonatal imitation are temporally organized.

It will also help us build a better understanding of the infants’ ability to engage in purposeful exchanges with another human being soon after birth.