ABSTRACT
Although our knowledge about young infants’ ability to imitate has been largely expanded during the last 2 decades, there are still controversies concerning the nature of this early imitative capacity. One such area of concern relates to the large variability in infants’ responses that has been noted in several studies. This variance has been interpreted in many different ways: as pure error variance, as a result of the various methods used in different studies, and as an indication of individual differences among infants. It has also been suggested that the variation in imitation observed among newborn children might be related to their emerging personality traits.
