Psychology says children who copy a parent’s words, expressions and gestures may be learning more than language |
When a toddler suddenly starts echoing a parent’s words, facial expressions or gestures, it can look like simple mimicry. Developmental psychology research, however, shows that imitation is closely connected to children’s ability to learn from other people, remember observed actions and interpret what others are trying to do. The American Psychological Association lists imitation of facial expressions, sounds and actions among the skills children develop during the first 18 months. Research by psychologist Andrew Meltzoff has also shown that children can reproduce observed actions after a delay well before the 18-month mark, providing evidence that they can retain information about what they have seen and use it later. Imitation therefore gives researchers a way to study early memory and social learning, rather than being only a form of copying what is immediately in front of a child.
Imitation and child development : what research shows before 18 months
Meltzoff’s research challenged an older view that deferred imitation, or reproducing an action after the original demonstration is no longer present, emerged around 18 months. In a 1988 study, 9-month-old infants were shown novel actions involving objects and were tested either immediately or after a 24-hour delay. The infants demonstrated both immediate and deferred imitation, with the delay not significantly reducing their imitative responses. Meltzoff concluded that infants could retain information about some observed actions and reproduce them a day later, showing that deferred imitation could occur well before the age traditionally associated with the ability.
5 Oct 2026 | 12:06
Parents, when your child refuses to greet relatives, do you make them say hello or respect their choice?
Later research extended the evidence for longer-term recall. In a study involving 14- and 16-month-old infants, Meltzoff tested whether children could reproduce previously observed actions after delays of two and four months. The study found significant deferred imitation at both intervals, providing evidence that infants could retain and reproduce multiple observed actions over much longer periods than the 24-hour delay used in the earlier experiment. Research has also examined what happens when children see an adult attempt an action but fail to complete it. In a 1995 study, Meltzoff showed 18-month-olds adults who tried unsuccessfully to perform particular target actions. The children subsequently reproduced the intended actions even though they had not actually seen the completed acts. The findings were interpreted as evidence that the toddlers could infer the adult’s intended outcome rather than simply reproduce the movements they had observed.
Deferred imitation: how toddlers remember actions they saw earlier
Deferred imitation is important because the child must reproduce an action after the original demonstration has ended. In the 9-month study, the 24-hour delay meant that the infants could not simply repeat an action they were still watching. Instead, their later behaviour provided evidence that they had retained information about the earlier demonstration. The later findings in 14- and 16-month-olds provide additional evidence that observed actions can be retained for substantially longer periods. The researchers tested children after delays of two and four months and found that they could reproduce multiple actions they had previously seen. These experiments have made deferred imitation an important method for studying memory in preverbal children, because the task does not require them to explain verbally what they remember.That does not mean every instance of a toddler copying a parent is evidence of deferred imitation. Immediate repetition, social imitation and delayed reproduction involve different experimental conditions. What the research establishes is that imitation can involve memory for previously observed actions and, in some situations, an understanding of what another person was trying to accomplish.
Why child-directed attention can change what toddlers imitate
The social context in which an action is demonstrated can also affect imitation. A 2014 study published in PLOS ONE titled Why Do Child-Directed Interactions Support Imitative Learning in Young Children? examined 18-month-olds who watched adults perform novel actions whose causal purpose was not immediately obvious. The researchers found that child-directed interactions supported imitative learning at 18 months more strongly than observational contexts in the study.The study also tested whether the difference could simply be explained by children paying more attention to the child-directed demonstrations. The researchers found no significant difference in overall attention between the child-directed and observed conditions, suggesting that the imitation effect could not be explained simply by the children looking more closely at the demonstrations. The researchers proposed that child-directed interactions may provide information that helps young children determine which aspects of an action are important to learn. The effect also changed with age. In the same research, children around two years old showed robust imitation across child-directed, observed and non-interactive conditions. The authors concluded that reliance on child-directed contexts for this kind of imitation decreases between 18 and 25 months.
What imitation may tell researchers about later development
Imitation is also associated with later language development, although it is only one part of a much broader developmental process. A longitudinal study published in Child Development examined whether imitative actions and pointing gestures at 18 months predicted language production at 36 months. The researchers found that imitation at 18 months contributed to predicting later language production even after accounting for language ability at 18 months.Taken together, the research suggests that imitation is more than an isolated behaviour. Infants can reproduce some actions after delays, toddlers can sometimes reproduce an intended outcome rather than a failed movement, and the social context of a demonstration can influence what young children imitate. These findings give psychologists a way to examine how children remember what they observe, learn from other people and gradually become more capable of extracting information from actions around them.
