The development of facial mimicry: An examination of a key copy-mechanism in infants within natural social contexts.

从很小的时候起，人们就模仿面部表情来理解和匹配他人的情绪状态，这种现象被称为面部模仿。面部表情的匹配，特别是与积极情绪有关的面部表情（即，微笑），被认为具有重要的社会积极功能。尽管有这些知识，我们对婴儿和儿童如何以及何时发展这种行为的了解仍然很少。在这里，我提出了一种新的，替代的方法来研究早期生活面部模仿，解决了目前在这一领域的研究方法上的缺陷。具体来说，这个项目的目的是研究婴儿和儿童在他们通常的自然社会环境中的面部模仿。首先，建立面部模仿的发展时间轴，以确定婴儿何时获得面部模仿的能力以及它是如何在形式上发展的。其次，社会角色的模仿行为将在发展的背景下进行调查，重点是如何模仿积极的情绪表达影响同伴之间的嬉戏，亲和的互动。最后，为了对人类行为做出生态学上有效的声明，本研究旨在通过研究英国和赞比亚的儿童来调查模仿行为的普遍性。这项拟议中的研究将为面部模仿在婴儿和儿童社会情感发展中的作用提供新的，重要的见解。

From very young ages, people mimic facial expressions to understand and match the emotional states ofothers, a phenomenon known as facial mimicry. The matching of facial expressions, especially of thoseassociated with positive emotions (i.e., smiles), is known to serve important socio-positive functions.Despite this knowledge, our understanding of how and when this behaviour develops in infants andchildren remains scarce. Here, I propose a new, alternative approach to studying early-life facial mimicrythat addresses the methodological drawbacks of current research in this field. Specifically, the aim of thisproposed project is to examine facial mimicry in infants and children engaging in their usual, naturalsocial environments. First, a developmental timeline of facial mimicry will be created to determine wheninfants acquire the capacities for facial mimicry and how it develops in form. Second, the social role offacial mimicry will be investigated in the context of development, with a focus on how mimicry ofpositive emotional expressions affects playful, affiliative interactions between peers. Finally, to makeecologically valid claims about human behaviour, this research aims to investigate the universality offacial mimicry by studying both UK and Zambian children. This proposed research will provide novel,important insight into the role of facial mimicry for socio-emotional development in infants and children.