First things first: infants make good use of the sympathetic rhythm of imitation, without reason or language

Research on communication with infants, including newborns, has demonstrated that imitations in great variety play many different parts, and with emotions of interest and pleasure. Matching another's actions may seek attention and provoke reply, accept or reject advances, express admiration or mockery. It seems best to regard imitating as one way that persons express and receive sympathetic awareness, one manifestation of the intuitive readiness to move rhythmically with others in games of sociability. Infants exhibit growing awareness of how to cooperate with others in gaining knowledge and skills. The intersubjective intuitions that are active early in life and that build trust and companionship must be significant for therapists who work with young patients for whom communication is difficult. Imitating and accepting imitations can build reciprocal confidence. Keywords: Infant sociabilityimitations and provocationsmotivationmusicalitymirror responses and sympathycompanionship Notes This is what I mischievously called ‘innate inter-subjectivity’ in the early 1970s. Now, though it has served its purpose well, that rather ponderous, indeed intellectually pedantic, term is something like an albatross round my neck, but maybe useful to baffle experts in machine intelligence. I prefer, in fact, innate inter-personality, but that is little better, so I am settling for natural ‘sympathy’, which turns out to have excellent historical and philological credentials. I am advised that the ancient Greek word ‘synrhythmia’ means the sharing of regulated movement – the process of acting together in the same way or in complementary ways. This is how Adam Smith employs the word ‘sympathy’ in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. He shows a picture of spectators moving to posture and gesticulate keeping balance while the watch street gymnasts who tread a tightrope.