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，人们就会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。众所周知，面部表情的匹配，尤其是与积极情绪（即微笑）相关的面部表情，具有重要的社会积极功能。尽管有了这些知识，我们对婴儿和儿童如何以及何时形成这种行为的了解仍然很少。在这里，我提出了一种新的替代方法来研究早期面部模仿，解决了该领域当前研究的方法学缺陷。具体来说，该项目的目的是检查婴儿和儿童在平常的自然社交环境中的面部模仿。首先，将创建面部模仿的发展时间表，以确定婴儿何时获得面部模仿能力以及其形态如何发展。其次，将在发展的背景下研究面部模仿的社会作用，重点是积极情绪表达的模仿如何影响同龄人之间有趣的、亲和的互动。最后，为了对人类行为提出生态学上有效的主张，本研究旨在通过研究英国和赞比亚儿童来调查面部模仿的普遍性。这项拟议的研究将为婴儿和儿童面部模仿对社会情感发展的作用提供新颖、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.