IMITATION IS A POWERFUL FORM OF LEARNING COMMONLY USED BY CHILDREN, ADULTS AND INFANTS.

Imitation accelerates learning and multiplies learning opportunities. It is faster than individual discovery and safer than trial-and-error learning. Children can use third-person information (observation of others) to create first-person knowledge, thereby accelerating the learning process. Instead of working out causal relations themselves, children can learn from watching experts.

Simple imitative behaviour is evident in the postnatal period, but by around 14 months, infants can remember and repeat actions they observe in adults, other children, and on television. Neurological studies have found that behavioural imitation, empathy, and moral sentiments may be part of the same developmental pathway.

Neuroscience findings show that when babies see others produce actions with a particular body part, their brains are activated correspondingly. Researchers from the University of Washington and Temple University conducted a study with seventy 14-month-old infants and found that babies’ brains displayed specific activation patterns when an adult performed a task with different parts of her body. When 14-month-old babies watched an adult touch a toy using her hand, the hand area of the baby’s brain lit up. When another group of infants watched an adult touch a toy using her foot, the foot area of the baby’s brain showed more activity. This mapping could play a role in babies' ability to produce the same actions they observe in adults.

Imitation games, such as "Peek-a-boo", provide early experience in mapping the similarities between self and others.

A child's enthusiasm for imitative behaviour prompts parental attention and interaction and provides a mechanism for transmitting appropriate cultural and social behaviour.

Infants like being imitated. Research has found that child-directed actions produce greater imitation compared to adult-directed actions.

Experiments in behaviour matching were tested in a series of studies with 14-month-olds. In these studies, the infant sat across a table from two adults. One of the adults matched everything the infant did, and the other actively matched the behaviour of a previous infant. Thus, both adults acted like babies, but only one of their beahviours matched that of the infant observing them.

The results showed that infants directed more visual attention and smiled more at the adult imitating them. They preferred the adult who was playing a matching game. Researchers have posited that mirroring back behaviour is emotionally pleasing and facilitates further communication.

Hence, imitating children is more effective in promoting imitation skills than expecting them to imitate adults.

When working with pre-verbal children, establishing imitation is important as a building block for social and language skills. For younger children in the sensorimotor stage (zero to two years old), carrying out actions with identical objects allows them to imitate adults in a way that doesn't require the ability to pretend or vocalise. It is a concrete and functional way to help children develop imitation skills.

Studies have also found that babies more readily learn and re-enact an event when it is produced by a person, rather than an inanimate device.

Hence, children learn more effectively when adults model actions for them to follow, rather than expect them to learn from electronic devices.

In another study, researchers examined the spontaneous vocal, verbal, and action imitation of 20 infants and their mothers during play and bath interactions in their homes when the infants were 10, 13, 17, and 21 months of age. Imitative episodes, where infants and adults mirrored one another, occurred frequently during these natural interactions. Verbal matching, in particular, rose dramatically across the second year, a time of rapid language development. Hence, adults who play with, imitate and talk to infants during daily routines help facilitate imitation skills and learning opportunities for them to build cognitive, motor and language abilities.