The view that the motor program activated during imitation is organized by goals was investigated by asking pre-school children to imitate a set of hand gestures of varying complexity that were made by an experimenter sitting in front of them. In Experiments 1 and 3, children reached for the correct object (one of their own ears or one of two dots on a table) but preferred to use the ipsilateral hand. This ipsilateral preference was not observed when hand movements were made to only one ear (Experiment 2), or when movements were diercted at space rather than physical objects (Experiment 3). The results are consistent with the notion that imitation is guided by goals and provide insights about how these goals are organized.

We review a series of behavioural experiments on imitation in children and adults that test the predictions of a new theory of imitation. Most of the recent theories of imitation assume a direct visual–to–motor mapping between perceived and imitated movements. Based on our findings of systematic errors in imitation, the new theory of goal–directed imitation (GOADI) instead assumes that imitation is guided by cognitively specified goals. According to GOADI, the imitator does not imitate the observed movement as a whole, but rather decomposes it into its separate aspects. These aspects are hierarchically ordered, and the highest aspect becomes the imitator's main goal. Other aspects become sub–goals. In accordance with the ideomotor principle, the main goal activates the motor programme that is most strongly associated with the achievement of that goal. When executed, this motor programme sometimes matches, and sometimes does not, the model's movement. However, the main goal extracted from the model movement is almost always imitated correctly.

To accomplish a smooth transition in conversation from one speaker to the next, a tight coordination of interaction between speakers is required. Recent studies of adult conversation suggest that this close timing of interaction may well be a universal feature of conversation. In the present paper, we set out to assess the development of this close timing of turns in infancy in vocal exchanges between mothers and infants. Previous research has demonstrated an early sensitivity to timing in interactions (e.g. Murray & Trevarthen, 1985). In contrast, less is known about infants’ abilities to produce turns in a timely manner and existing findings are rather patchy. We conducted a longitudinal study of twelve mother-infant dyads in free-play interactions at the ages of 3, 4, 5, 9, 12 and 18 months. Based on existing work and the predictions made by the Interaction Engine Hypothesis (Levinson, 2006), we expected that infants would begin to develop the temporal properties of turn-taking early in infancy but that their timing of turns would slow down at 12 months, which is around the time when infants start to produce their first words. Findings were consistent with our predictions: Infants were relatively fast at timing their turn early in infancy but slowed down towards the end of the first year. Furthermore, the changes observed in infants’ turn-timing skills were not caused by changes in maternal timing, which remained stable across the 3-18 month period. However, the slowing down of turn-timing started somewhat earlier than predicted: at 9 months.

The current report provides a new framework to explore the role of parenting practices and principles during infancy. We identify structure and attunement as key parenting principles during infancy. Structure represents reliance on regularity and routines in daily life. Attunement represents reliance on infant cues and close physical contact. We suggest parents' relative endorsement of these parenting principles is related to their choices about practices such as feeding, holding and night-time sleeping. We designed the Baby Care Questionnaire to measure parents' endorsement of structure and attunement, as well as their daily parenting practices. We report data demonstrating the factor structure, reliability and validity of the BCQ. The BCQ, to our knowledge, is the first comprehensive measure of parenting practices and principles during infancy. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for the measure.