ArticleBiology letters2019
Re-analysis of data reveals no evidence for neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- The development of play face mimicry: comparative insights from human infants, adults and orangutans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The influence of task difficulty, social tolerance and model success on social learning in Barbary macaques.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- What Happened to Mirror Neurons?Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022Article
- Faces and Voices Processing in Human and Primate Brains: Rhythmic and Multimodal Mechanisms Underlying the Evolution and Development of Speech.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Evaluating the influence of action- and subject-specific factors on chimpanzee action copying.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Over the past decade, a growing number of publications have claimed to provide evidence for the existence and function of neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques. Here I show that there is in fact no empirical basis for these claims. Studies of the phenomenon have consistently failed to implement the gold standard cross-target analytical approach, which controls for increases in matching responses that may not be a function of the specific modelled behaviour. Critically, a pre-registered re-analysis of the entire set of existing data using this cross-target approach shows that macaque neonates have failed to produce matching tongue protrusion or lipsmacking responses at levels greater than chance. Furthermore, there is no evidence for intra-individual consistency in 'imitative' responses across different actions, as imitation scores for the two actions are negatively correlated with each other. Macaque tongue protrusion and lipsmacking responses may vary as a function of general factors that fluctuate over testing sessions, rather than as a function of the specific model or of between-individual variations in imitative tendencies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.