Study Says Newborns Do Not Imitate Adults, It's The Other Way Around

For so long, it has been said that newborn babies imitate adults. University of Queensland School of Psychology researchers have found out that it's the opposite.

Imitation is a skill that babies have to learn, possibly by adults imitating them, not by doing it themselves, reported ABC. "We imitate them, and when we imitate them, this stimulates them to behave," senior author Professor Virginia Slaughter said. Slaughter is a developmental psychologist at the University of Queensland.

Newborns In The Study Observed At Four Different Periods

The researchers tested 106 newborn babies when they were one, three, six and nine weeks. At every stage, adults showed different a number of facial expressions, gestures and sounds to every newborn baby, according to Brisbane Times. The adults exhibited gestures like grasping hand, mouth open, sad and happy suggestions, pointing finger, sounds and tongue poking.

Slaughter said that the study was designed to see if newborns who imitate adults more during their neonatal period would be more precocious socially when they turn one and two years old. However, the results showed that newborns seemed to copy tongue-poking at week one but they did not copy it at week three, six or nine.

Previous Studies On Newborns Flawed

Daily Mail reported that the new research suggested that previous techniques used to study the nature of imitation in newborns were flawed. Previous studies had tested newborns' responses to an adult who was poking out her tongue and opening her mouth.

Then, the newborn would be evaluated on the frequency of his or her imitation before seeing the adult do it. However, the gestures were limited to the two, so it was said that the previous studies did not show that the newborn was actually imitation what they saw from the adults.

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