Individual differences in neonatal “imitation” fail to predict early social cognitive behaviour

Abstract

The influential hypothesis that humans imitate from birth – and that this capacity is foundational to social cognition – is currently being challenged from several angles. Most prominently, the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study of neonatal imitation to date failed to find evidence that neonates copied any of nine actions at any of four time points (Oostenbroek et al., [2016] Current Biology, 26, 1334–1338). The authors of an alternative and statistically liberal post‐hoc analysis of these same data (Meltzoff et al., [2017] Developmental Science, 21, e12609), however, concluded that the infants actually did imitate one of the nine actions: tongue protrusion. In line with the original intentions of this longitudinal study, we here report on whether individual differences in neonatal “imitation” predict later‐developing social cognitive behaviours. We measured a variety of social cognitive behaviours in a subset of the original sample of infants (N = 71) during the first 18 months: object‐directed imitation, joint attention, synchronous imitation and mirror self‐recognition. Results show that, even using the liberal operationalization, individual scores for neonatal “imitation” of tongue protrusion failed to predict any of the later‐developing social cognitive behaviours. The average Spearman correlation was close to zero, mean rs = 0.027, 95% CI [−0.020, 0.075], with all Bonferroni adjusted p values > .999. These results run counter to Meltzoff et al.'s rebuttal, and to the existence of a “like me” mechanism in neonates that is foundational to human social cognition.

Prenatal Zika virus infection has sex-specific effects on infant physical development and mother-infant social interactions

“…Our behavioral evaluations of infant imitation also evidenced no group differences, perhaps because we found no evidence that any of the infants imitated. Although other groups do find evidence of imitation in neonates using this task (34,98), when data are re-analyzed in ways that ensure that infants are making meaningful responses that differ from chance (called cross-target analyses), these claims do not hold (81,99). As a result, it is unclear whether rhesus neonates actually imitate in general and whether performance on this task is meaningful.…”

Social motivation predicts gaze following between 6 and 14 months

“…Likewise, others report infants’ gaze following skills are somewhat developmentally stable at early ages, but this stability appears to be relatively small (e.g., r = .20 from 6 to 10 months; Astor et al., 2020; ρ = .37 from 8 to 12 months; Schietecatte et al., 2012). Interestingly, another study failed to detect stable individual differences in a variety of social cognitive skills in the first year (Redshaw et al., 2020). Together, these findings indicate rapid changes to social cognitive skills in early infancy may make it difficult to consistently detect stable individual differences.…”

Does Neonatal Imitation Exist? Insights From a Meta-Analysis of 336 Effect Sizes

“…Recently, authors of the largest ever longitudinal study of human neonatal imitation (Oostenbroek et al, 2016) reported that 106 neonates failed to imitate any of nine gestures at any of four time points between 1 and 9 weeks of age. Although this study was originally aimed at uncovering whether neonatal imitation predicted later social cognitive capacities (see Redshaw et al, 2020; Suddendorf, Oostenbroek, Nielsen, & Slaughter, 2013), the results have been interpreted as a compelling and perhaps fatal challenge to the existence of the phenomenon itself (Heyes, 2016b). In response, a group of 13 prominent neonatal-imitation researchers published a detailed critique, arguing that the unsuccessful replication attempts could be explained by specific methodological choices (Meltzoff et al, 2018; see Table 1).…”