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. 2016 May;27(5):675-84.
doi: 10.1177/0956797616632231. Epub 2016 Apr 12.

Motor System Activation Predicts Goal Imitation in 7-Month-Old Infants

Courtney A Filippi  1 , Erin N Cannon  2 , Nathan A Fox  2 , Samuel G Thorpe  2 , Pier F Ferrari  3 , Amanda L Woodward  4
Affiliations

Motor System Activation Predicts Goal Imitation in 7-Month-Old Infants

Courtney A Filippi et al. Psychol Sci. 2016 May.

Abstract

The current study harnessed the variability in infants' neural and behavioral responses as a novel method for evaluating the potential relations between motor system activation and social behavior. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to record neural activity as 7-month-old infants observed and responded to the actions of an experimenter. To determine whether motor system activation predicted subsequent imitation behavior, we assessed event-related desynchronization (ERD) at central sites during action observation as a function of subsequent behavior. Greater mu desynchronization over central sites was observed when infants subsequently reproduced the experimenter's goal than when they did not reproduce the goal and instead selected the nongoal object. We also found that mu desynchronization during action execution predicted the infants' later propensity to reproduce the experimenter's goal-directed behavior. These results provide the first evidence that motor system activation predicts the imitation of other individuals' goals during infancy.

Keywords: imitation; infancy; neural mirroring; social cognition.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Depiction of the experimental setup. In the action-observation phase (a), infants observed the presenter as she selected one of two toys. Subsequently (b), the infants were given an opportunity to select one of the toys themselves.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Mean event-related desynchronization (ERD) scores in the mu frequency range (6–9 Hz) over central sites during action observation, for trials with goal responses and trials with nongoal responses. The ERD score for a trial was calculated as 10 times the log ratio of power during the test interval to power during the baseline interval. Error bars indicate ±1 SE.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Scatterplot (with best-fitting regression line) demonstrating the relation between mean event-related desynchronization (ERD) at central sites during action execution and the proportion of trials on which each infant produced goal responses.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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