EXPLAINING FACIAL IMITATION - A THEORETICAL-MODEL

A long-standing puzzle in developmental psychology is how infants imit ate gestures they cannot see themselves perform (facial gestures). Two critical issues are: (a) the metric infants use to detect cross-modal equivalences in human acts and (b) the process by which they correct their imitative errors. We address these issues in a detailed model of the mechanisms underlying facial imitation. The model can be extended to encompass other types of imitation. The model capitalizes on three new theoretical concepts. First, organ identification is the means by which infants relate parts of their own bodies to corresponding ones of the adult's. Second, body babbling (infants' movement practice gain ed through self-generated activity) provides experience mapping moveme nts to the resulting body configurations. Third, organ relations provi de the metric by which infant and adult acts are perceived in commensu rate terms. In imitating, infants attempt to match the organ relations they see exhibited by the adults with those they feel themselves make . We show how development restructures the meaning and function of ear ly imitation. We argue that important aspects of later social cognitio n are rooted in the initial cross-modal equivalence between self and o ther found in newborns. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.