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Since we weren’t able to speak during the first couple years of our lives, we had to understand steps to make simple movements by watching our parents and imitating them. New research from Temple University and the University of Washington published within the journal PLOS You have revealed some of the neural mechanisms behind how babies learn through imitation.
“Babies are exquisitely careful people-watchers, and they’re primed to learn from others,” said study author Andrew Meltzoff, co-director from the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “And now we see that when babies watch another person, it activates their very own brains. This study is a first step in understanding the neuroscience of methods babies learn through imitation.”
In the research, they found that babies’ brains showed specific activity patterns when an adult touched a toy with different areas of her body. When the 14-month-old babies watched a researcher’s hand touch a toy, the hand region of the child’s brain became active. When another group of infants saw a researcher touch exactly the same toy together with her foot, the foot area of the child’s brain illuminated.
Because each part of the body comes with an identifiable section of neural ‘real estate’ within the brain, the scientists could clearly correlate brain activity to a particular limbs. Previous studies have discovered that a corresponding part of the adult brain activates while watching someone else use a specific body part, and also the study team wondered when the same would be true for babies.
For the research, 70 infants were outfitted with electroencephalogram (EEG) caps, which have embedded sensors that detect brain activity in the various motor regions of the mind. While seated on a parent’s lap, each child observed an experimenter touching a toy on the low table. Once the researcher pressed the toy’s clear plastic dome with her hand or foot, music sounded and confetti within the dome spun around. The researcher repeated the actions before the baby lost interest.
“Our findings show that when babies see others produce actions with a particular body part, their marbles are activated in a corresponding way,” said Joni Saby, a psychology graduate student at Temple University in Philadelphia. “This mapping may facilitate imitation and may play a role in the baby’s capability to then make the same actions themselves.”
To copy the things they see adults do, babies must first know which body part is required to replicate an observed behavior. The brand new study indicated that babies’ brains are organized in a manner that helps crack that code.
“The main reason this is exciting is it gives understanding of a crucial facet of imitation,” said study author Peter Marshall, an associate psychology professor at Temple University. “To mimic the act of someone else, babies first have to register what part of the body the other person used. Our findings suggest that babies do this in a particular way by mapping the actions of the body else onto their own body.”
“The neural system of babies directly connects these to others, which jump-starts imitation and social-emotional connectedness and bonding,” Meltzoff added. “Babies look at you and see themselves.”
