In addition to physical growth, for humans, one of the real problems of social isolation is not having access to those who know more about the world. Adults usually look after – and look out for – the child. Even if an infant manages to survive, not having older and wiser individuals around means uncertainty. Without the ability to understand, control, communicate, regulate, navigate or negotiate the world, an individual is helpless. And without others to help, these uncertainties create stress and anxiety, which in the long term are corrosive to our health and mental well-being.
It’s not just love and attention children need: they also require order and structure. They seek out adults who behave predictably. Paradoxically, they will even form strong attachment to parents who are abusive just so long as they are reliably abusive.64 This is because the abuse creates anxiety in the child that, in turn, increases their need to attach. This becomes a vicious dysfunctional cycle of love and hate that sets the scene for abusive relationships later in adult life.65 Infants need adults that respond reliably to them because they are attentive and predictable. That’s why most babies love ‘peek-a-boo’ – it’s more than just a game – it’s a way for infants to identify adults who are prepared to invest their time and effort.66
Of course, sustenance and nutrition are vital, but infants require other people in order to discover who they are. Without others, we cannot develop the sense of self that most of us have – an integrated, coherent individual existing independently as a member of a larger social group. Who knows what kind of self, if any, would emerge in a child raised in total isolation? One can only speculate that such an inhuman situation would produce an inhuman self.
Copy Me
It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By the time infants reach their first birthday, they are always looking for opportunities to imitate. Their social brains, percolating with explosions of connectivity, are on the lookout for useful information from others. By watching others, babies are making use of thousands of years of evolution that has equipped them to learn rapidly by observation – which is so much easier and better than trying to figure stuff out for themselves.
It would appear that most of us like to be imitated or at least we like people who copy our behaviours. Have you ever noticed how people in love do this? The next time you are in a park where couples hang out or maybe a popular restaurant where romantic, candlelit dinners are common, take a look at the actions of people in love. Even though you may not be able to hear the sweet nothings they exchange, you can immediately tell when two people fancy each other by the amount of imitation they share, just by looking at their body postures and non-verbal communication.
To be able to copy others is one of the most powerful skills with which humans are born.67 From the very beginning, babies are sophisticated people-watchers, following adults around and copying their behaviours. No other animal has the same capacity for copying the way we naturally do. This ability probably existed before we evolved language, as it would have been really useful as a way to pass on knowledge about tools. No other animal makes or uses tools as conspicuously as humans, and despite the isolated reports of nut-cracking or termite-prodding with sticks by chimpanzees, these pale into insignificance compared to what babies spontaneously learn from watching others.
This is because humans have been programmed to imitate. If an infant watches an adult perform some new action on a never before seen object, a one-year-old will remember and copy the behaviour one week later.68 The child knows what the goal of the action is even when the adult is thwarted by some problem. In one study,69 a female adult looked and smiled at fourteen-month-old infants and then leaned forward to activate a light-switch on a box by bending over and touching it with her forehead. When presented with the light-switch box, the babies produced the same bizarre movement. However, if the woman had her arms wrapped in a blanket and did exactly the same movement with her forehead, the babies did not copy the head movement, but activated the light-switch on the box with their hands. The babies must have reasoned that, because the woman’s hands were restricted, her goal was simply to press the switch. When her hands were not bound, however, babies must have reasoned that using your head was important for activating the light-switch.
Many animals can copy but none do so for the pure joy of being sociable. Copying is not an automatic reflex. Babies do not slavishly duplicate every adult action they see.70 If the adult does not smile and get the babies’ attention from the start, then babies don’t copy. Also, babies only copy adults who seem to know what they are doing. Initially babies will copy the actions of an adult who is wearing a blindfold. The baby does not know that the adult cannot see. However, if you give the baby the blindfold to play with, then they don’t make the mistake of copying the blindfolded adult again. Babies know that they can’t possibly be looking at anything worth paying attention to. In other words, babies will only copy adults when they are led to think that something is worth doing. Babies will even copy robots that seem to behave socially. My colleague Shoji Itakura in Kyoto has shown that if a robot initially looks at an infant, then the infant will copy the robot’s actions. If the robot does not react socially to the child, it is ignored. By simply looking at the baby, the robot is assumed to have a purposeful mind worthy of attention.71
Monkey See – Monkey Do
Have you ever wondered why you wince when you see someone else being punched? After all, it’s not you who is taking a beating, but you copy their reaction. Neuroscientists have been studying the neural basis of this social copying phenomenon following the discovery of brain cells, aptly named ‘mirror neurons’, that appear to fire in sympathy when watching other people’s actions. Mirror neurons can be found in the cortical regions of the brain towards the front and top of the head known as the supplementary motor area that is active during the planning and execution of movements.
The mirror neuron system was originally discovered by accident in the laboratories of the Italian neurophysiologist, Giacomo Rizzolatti, in the 1990s.72 I remember attending an early lecture given by Rizzolatti in which he explained how he and fellow researchers had implanted an electrode into the brain region of a monkey that controls movements to study the firing of neurons while the monkey reached to pick up a peanut. As predicted the neuron fired when the animal reached out to pick up the reward. But what they didn’t expect was that the same neuron also fired when the animal watched the human experimenter pick up the peanut. How could that be? This was a cell in the motor area of the monkey’s brain, not in the human’s brain. It was as if the cell was mirroring the behaviour of someone else. The monkey mirror neurons did not fire to just any movement of the human, but only to the actions that led to retrieving the peanut. The neuron seemed to know the experimenter’s goal. Whether mirror neurons are a distinct class of specialized neurons is still hotly debated,73 but they do appear to resonate with other people’s actions and therefore could reveal what is on other people’s minds.