Why Do Children Imitate Everything They See?

Children have a great ability to imitate what they see. Within just a few hours of birth, children begin to imitate the adults they have around them. For example, if the mother sticks out her tongue, the newborn may imitate her. Infants can do this with remarkable success by mimicking the same behavior. But why do children imitate everything they see?

Thanks to imitation, children can practice their own abilities to express themselves. When infants are 12 to 21 days old, they can mimic facial expressions and gestures with their arms. Such an imitation means that newborns can compare their own behavior, even though they cannot see it themselves, with gestures that they see others do.

But not only that, now we will take a closer look at a study where you see when children begin to imitate what they see.

Newborns mimic facial expressions in adults

In a study conducted by Meltzoff AN. and Moore MK., evaluated the ability of newborns between 0.7 and 71 hours old to imitate two adult facial expressions: to open the mouth and stick out the tongue. They placed the newborns in a room with dim lighting. The researchers then used infrared video equipment to observe them.

An observer, who did not know what facial expression was shown to the infants, then evaluated the recorded sequences. The researchers counted both the frequency and duration on occasions when babies opened their mouths and stretched out their tongues, respectively. The results showed that newborns can mimic both of these facial expressions.

The study suggests that this imitative behavior is likely due to three possible underlying mechanisms: instrumental or associative learning, innate release mechanisms, or active intermodal matching.

In other words, infants have the ability to recognize stimuli that were originally encoded in a sensory modality through another modality (for example, touching something without seeing it and then seeing something without touching it).

Why do children imitate what they see?

Children imitate what they see because of mirror neurons. These nerve cells were discovered by Giacomo Rizzolatti and are special types of neurons that humans, primates and certain birds have.

They become activated when a person performs an action, but also when that person observes a similar action performed by another person. Mirror neurons are part of a neural network that enables us to form a perception of how execution, intention and emotion are connected.

When you stop to observe another person, the person’s hand, foot or mouth movements activate the same specific areas in the motor bark as if you performed the same movements yourself. But the process goes further than that – the movement, when observed, generates a similar latent movement in the observer.

The system integrates in its nervous circuits the attribution or perception of other people’s intentions. This explains our empathy, or mentalization.

In this regard, understanding and actions towards others are based on our understanding of the intentions and also the motives for other people’s behaviors. To achieve this, neural circuits subliminally simulate the actions we observe. This allows us to identify with others.

In this way , actors and audiences are in very similar neural states, as if they performed the same actions, had the same intentions or felt the same emotions.

Conclusion

Humans are social beings. Our survival depends on being able to understand the intentions and emotions that human behaviors show us. Mirror neurons make it possible for us to understand what is happening in the brains of our fellow human beings – and not through any conceptual reasoning, but directly. We can do it by feeling and not having to think.

They allow us to learn to imitate gestures: smile, walk, talk, dance and play football, among other things. In addition, these neurons make us feel as if we ourselves have fallen when we see another person on the floor, can make us experience emotional pain when we see someone crying and can even make us feel shared joy, among other things.