This paper investigates a two-stage model of infants' imitative learning from observed actions and their effects. According to this model, the observation of another person's action activates the corresponding motor code in the infants' motor repertoire (i.e. leads to motor resonance). The second process guiding imitative behavior results from the…

Newborn infants appear to possess an innate bias that guides preferential orienting to and tracking of human faces. There is, however, no clear agreement as to the underlying mechanism supporting such a preference. In particular, two competing theories (known as the "structural" and "sensory" hypotheses) conjecture fundamentally different biasing…