And to my right I have.....

.....Colwyn Trevarthen, a leading psychologist in the field of developmental psychology! His research includes neonatal observations, with one study looking at the proto-conversation between mother and infant, using sound and gestures.

To his left...... Jacqueline nadel, also a pioneer of developmental psychology. Jacqueline is from France and much of her research focuses on neonatal imitation, with one study testing the 'tongue protrusion' paradigm, in which infants observe a person sticking their tongue out and they then imitate! She also did a 2D experiment which had an full face presentation, just a mouth and a robotic mouth... The infants imitated more in the disembodied conditions, whilst paying more attention to the eye area in the embodied condition! Very interesting! And lots of cute videos! (Also she said if I ever wished to visit Paris......although this was after a couple of wines haha)

Next one along is Hilary Kennedy, a lady who uses videos of the parent and infant interaction to help improve the relationship between baby and parent in situations where they may be issues (disability/abuse/care etc) very interesting!

Also (not pictured) there was Mikael Heimann, a lovely man who used his grandchildren in his presentation, also looking at imitation and even some evidence of imitation in neonatal autism!

Pier Ferrari was also there, an Italian researcher who does alot of neuropsychological work with baby monkeys! EXTREMELY cute!! And evidence that they imitate and engage in proto-conversation :) amongst other evidence that mirror neurons are based on context! (Different firing rates for different action-perception tasks) pier was very interested in my knowledge of Scotland, as he has been visiting annually since he was a boy.

And of course Emese Nagy, one of the only developmental psychologists who has collected various data across 20 years, whilst finding empirical evidence that newborns imitate, and we are lucky to have her as a lecturer at our university!

We had a great/very long day! And a couple of lovely meals in which I got to speak to these people and ask any questions I had.... One of the most important questions was..... Have you ever been to Glenelg?? None had, but they had visited Skye and the surrounding areas! I may drop them an email recommending some accommodation I know of... Just incase they would like a return visit! :)