It’s a common feeling: while talking to a friend or colleague you suddenly realise that you are copying his or her behaviour or accent. This tendency to spontaneously and unconsciously copy or ‘mimic’ others’ postures, gestures, facial expressions, accents, and emotions plays an important role in social interactions. For example, mimicry has been shown to contribute to the development of rapport and liking between strangers, to increase helping behaviours, and to reduce prejudice. Despite the important social functions mimicry serves, very little is known about how it develops.

1. The Babylab, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London
Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Tel: (+44) 20 7631 6258 • Fax: (+44) 20 7631 6587 • E-mail: babylab@bbk.ac.uk
Baby Face
It’s a common feeling: while talking to a friend or colleague you suddenly realise that
you are copying his or her behaviour or accent. This tendency to spontaneously and
unconsciously copy or ‘mimic’ others’ postures, gestures, facial expressions, accents, and
emotions plays an important role in social interactions. For example, mimicry has been
shown to contribute to the development of rapport and liking between strangers, to
increase helping behaviours, and to reduce prejudice. Despite the important social
functions mimicry serves, very little is known about how it develops.
The ‘Baby Face’ project aims to investigate the development of mimicry by
following a group of 50 4-month-old infants until they are 3 years old. Parents and
babies will come to the lab every 6 months and during these visits we will use a range of
infant-friendly methods to investigate how factors like infants’ growing social abilities
and increasing brain connectivity might influence the development of mimicry.
Electromyography (EMG): To assess the
presence of facial mimicry we use EMG, a tool
that can measure the electrical activation that
occurs naturally when our muscles contract.
Using this method we can detect subtle
activation of the facial muscles while infants
observe videos of facial actions such as mouth
opening and frowning (which babies often find
very funny!).
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS): We use
NIRS to investigate activation of the brain
regions supporting mimicry. This technique
measures changes in the amount of oxygen in the
blood supply to the brain, based on which we can
infer which areas of the brain are active.
Electroencephalography (EEG): We also measure infants’ naturally
occurring electrical brain activation using EEG. This allows us to
investigate brain connectivity, i.e. how the different areas of the brain
are connected or ‘talking to each other’.
We’re still looking for babies for this exciting study so…
if you have a baby of 4 months or younger and would be interested in
participating, please contact Dr. Carina de Klerk on c.deklerk@bbk.ac.uk
or sign up to the Babylab here: www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/babylab