Tongue Protrusion In Human Neonates: Article Analysis

The article, “Imitation of Tongue Protrusion in Human Neonates,” started off discussing previous research in the field. Although the discussion of previous research was not an in-depth analysis of any of the research, it provided some insight into the specific study that the article is mainly about. Through reading the article, the research question becomes clear; the experimenters wanted to examine if newborn infants possessed the ability to imitate simple actions, specifically the ability to imitate sticking out their tongue. One of the topics that has been covered in this course is the topic of early childhood development. One concept that came to mind was the first stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory, the sensorimotor stage; this …show more content…
Also, another topic discussed in both the textbook and the article is the mirror neurons in the primary motor cortex that allow a person to imitate others.
This study used an experimental research method. The independent variable in this experiment would be the different positions they tested the infants in. The dependent variable would be the way that the experimenter interacted with each of the infants. The researchers selected 121 infants who were not born prematurely, which is over 36 weeks gestation, and who did not require medical assistance. The infants were all between the age of three hours old to five days old. The article states that the researchers excluded six infants from the study because of a “lack of a baseline period.” According to the article, the experiment was