The nature and function of imitation in early adult-infant interaction

This story was created with the help of the author: Catalina Young is a bachelor in English philology and sociology at California University. She is currently working as one of the best writers at the exclusive papers She also studies feminine psychology.

The nature and function of imitation is bent on the idea that early infants have the tendency of imitating their adults in whatever they do. The imitation rate is usually very high since the adult world appears to be the most immediate one. For instance, at the age of ten months, some infants usually respond to most maternal imitations. The infants are aware that they are being imitated at this time. The responses the infants make to their mothers are also linked to the vocabulary in the mother’s language. These infants advance in the lexical grammar as they reach seventeen to twenty-one months. This advancement is based on the social response the infant acquires at ten months. The imitation trend promotes development by repeating their care giver’s vocal imitations. The imitation characteristic also helps the infant know that other individuals, who live around the same social environment, are like her/him. This aids in gaining the confidence during the fourth and fifth year of the child’s growth.

The facial imitation gesture serves the social role amid the infant and the adult. This also includes the empathy aspect between the mother and the child. Empathy of emotions between the mother or the care giver and the infant forms a basis of later sturdy relationship amid the two. A conversational analysis is drawn by the mother or the care giver by using the time expressions of the infant. It is a crucial procedure to get the understanding from an infant mainly in the early stages of life. This calls for a close study of the infant by the care giver. This is how one understands when the baby is hungry or when he is sleepy. These timely expressions are studied as the infant is in the process of growth, which helps the infant achieve the inter-subjective interaction.

When infants use imitation, they include a lot of practices like switching roles, sharing subject matters, as well as use conventional rules as observed by Zeedyk. Therefore, the naturalistic setting provides a room for imitation. The communicative purpose of imitation is also temporary, which disappears once the child fully develops language. Infants use imitation as a channel of recognizing of the matched behaviour. This is the ability to detect what one sees and what one does. All the actions depicted in early adult-infant imitation could lead to a formation of a social eventuality phenomenon of I act like you. The imitation recognition also conveys a message of showing that the infant recognizes that you act like him (notice that you act like me).

A six-week year old infant reacts negatively, when she is being experimented socially. This is practically done, when the mother poses a still face to the infant, when they have a one-to-one interaction. This creates the attention of the adult alongside the infant, which makes the adult respond to the infants’ needs. Therefore, a general conclusion is made that infants possess a natural capability to compare the expressions presented to them using their sense of muscular feedback. This does not involve using the movements to link the imitation gesture to link to the expression. The imitation stage proceeds to eighteen months with the infants imitating some of the simple tasks they observe from their care givers. For instance, the infant would sometimes fancy a toy phone and pretend to call someone by saying “hello”. The child would also use a toy hammer, which they may have seen the adults using. There is also the interactive function of the infant in imitating the adult. This occurs in situations that involve the infants directly with the care giver as discussed above. When an infant imitates the adult after pretending to cry or smiling, the situation qualifies to be an interactive one. This is due to the fact that the care giver and the child share an emotional feeling of the same characteristic.

Imitation also helps the healthy infants form a defective eventuality since it meets their immediate expectations. This is accompanied by the fact that these infants usually have a universal expectancy for all social behaviours. This explains why the infants tend to respond normally to the usual human behaviour. The psychological adaptation to the imitation conveys the intention of the conversational analysis between the infant and the adult. The infants, who cannot apply this manner of contingency, are offered an alternative matching. This includes the cases of autism alongside low-functioning infants. These children tend to keep off from strangers and do not pay attention to them. Such infants have difficulties in imitation since they do not hold the interactive idea. Autism infants form a view in their mind that would lead them to be assuming a negative attitude towards strangers. These infants also take time to grow since the social imitation is turned out. This makes the Autism cases manageable with time by involving the infant in the public.

In my opinion, the Zeedyk’s research on the early-adult interaction is sufficient to explain the model in several aspects when compared with Trevarthen, C (1979) ‘Communication and cooperation in early infancy: a description of primary inter-subjectivity’, and Meltzoff, A. and Gopnik, A. (1993) ‘The role of imitation in understanding persons and developing a theory of mind’, in Baren-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H. and Cohen, D.J. (eds) Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. For instance, the theory clearly explains the stages of an infant in the process of imitation. Zeedyk’s work also shows the importance of understanding the infant at the early stages. Infants’ behaviour should be experimented from time to time so as to check on the most rampant behaviour among them. This includes such processes like subjecting the infant on an experimenter to determine the responses in the facial gestures. The overall results are later assessed through the research team personnel while comparing it with the previous data collected. Such a work needs so much time in order to draw conclusions.

Zeedyk’s theory of the relationship between the adult and the infant also shows that there is almost the same rate when it comes to infant to infant imitation as well as adult to infant imitation. This mostly occurs during the later stages of development, when the infants have approximately two years. For example, infants seated facing each other tend to imitate one another in the way they seat, chew gum among other things. The same case is repeated with an adult while the same results are anticipated. The facial or gesture imitation comes naturally due to the emotional attach to the infant.

The theory is also important since it offers an account on involuntary imitation, which happens as a result of a stimulus that is usually given to duplicate. This implies that the imitation could equal the guidelines that are associated with visual incentive. This implies that imitation cannot compete with the matters along with visual stimulus. For instance, an adult could instruct children to play with children, where they ought to follow the commands given. The game expects the adult to give the commands that indicate the actions. The commands may perhaps be equal or match the action. The rules state that the children, who imitate the adult with the commands, ought to stay in the game. More so, the children, who imitate the wrong action command, are taken out of the game. This situation leads the child’s routine imitation is initiated in this stage.

According to the emotional bases of this theory, the visual stimulus is assumed to be ignored by the child. This means that the stimulus is usually imitated faster than the imitation of the control. Consequently, the response times resulted at a higher rate in attuned scenarios rather than in the case of irreconcilable settings. The major contributing factor that results to this situation is the fact that children are always in the company of diverse people. Parents usually have a huge impact, therefore, they meet all the needs of their children. This is why children imitate their parents. Another example of imitation in this case occurs when the child observes the mother sweeping the floor. Thus, the children learn the way of doing things without having to wait for instructions from the parent or guardian. The above examples have been mostly used by Zeedyk to explain the situation and the origin of imitation from the infants. This was through a careful study conducted by several medical schools around the world, which also included the observation of very young infants of forty-five minutes old. The automatic imitation helps the infants in carrying out diverse tasks in the prospect. This is by the voluntary committing oneself to doing several tasks as the parent does them. Hence, there is a feeling attaining a goal in life that one boast of later.

The theory of the research carried out by Zeedyk also discusses the issue of deferred imitation. This is an imitation that comes as a result of the infant or the children’s capability to formulate a mental behaviour that is performed by others. This action encourages the perceptual support of forming the images of the previous incidences and being able to copy the same action. The deferred imitation sees that the individuals repeat the action later. This inclination of deferred imitation has depicted an improved ability of general knowledge of children as they grow up.

In conclusion, the adult-infant imitation is a broad topic with several other theories that attain and expound on the knowledge of imitation and its types. This study is crucial since it has guided several other people on how to deal with the issue. The compatibility modes of all the imitation researches are still researching on some complex strategies to the issue. The nature and function of the imitation is to understand the language of infants as well as the social function of the same infants. The extent, to which one understands them, depends on close observation as well as proper feeling of emotional connection towards the infants. Generally, the infants are the sole basis of life, therefore, all the attention is given to them in order to mark the beginning of life and its several aspects. Therefore, imitation is not condemned in any way but encouraged as a basis of teaching.