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Updated: Nov 21, 2025

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
Published on: April 28, 2016
No Compelling Evidence That Newborns Imitate Oral Gestures
Moshe Anisfeld1, Gerald Turkewitz2, Susan A Rose3
1Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology and Albert Einstein College of Medicine Yeshiva University.
Abstract:
Newborns (N = 83) were presented with 3 conditions, each for 160 sec: tongue protrusion (TP), mouth opening (MO), and control (CO). In TP and MO, a female model alternated between demonstrating the gesture for 20 sec and presenting a passive, motionless face for 20 sec. In CO, she presented a passive face in both the "demonstration" and "passive" intervals. The participants' eyes were more widely open in the demonstration intervals of TP and MO than in the passive intervals, indicating that they were attending to the gestures. In TP, the participants produced more TP responses than MO responses, but in MO there was no effect, undermining the neonatal imitation hypothesis.
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