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，这一现象被称为面部模仿。面部表情的匹配，尤其是那些容易与积极情绪(即微笑)联系在一起的表情，被认为具有重要的社会积极功能。尽管有这些知识，我们对婴儿和儿童这种行为是如何以及何时发展的了解仍然很少。在这里，我提出了一种新的替代方法来研究早期的面部模仿，以解决目前这一领域研究的方法论缺陷。具体地说，这项提议的项目的目的是检查婴儿和儿童在他们平时自然的社交环境中的面部模仿。首先，将创建面部模仿的发育时间表，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，将在发展的背景下研究模仿的社会角色，重点是积极情绪表达的模仿如何影响同伴之间的嬉戏和从属互动。最后，为了对人类行为做出生态上有效的主张，这项研究旨在通过研究英国和赞比亚的儿童来调查宗教模仿的普遍性。这项拟议的研究将为面部模仿在婴儿和儿童的社会情感发展中所起的作用提供新的、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.