Neonatal imitation is a cornerstone in many theoretical accounts of human development and social behavior, yet its existence has been debated for the past 40 years. To examine possible explanations for the inconsistent findings in this body of research, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis synthesizing 336 effect sizes from 33 independent samples of human newborns, reported in 26 articles. The meta-analysis found significant evidence for neonatal imitation (d = 0.68, 95% CI = [0.39, 0.96], p < .001) but substantial heterogeneity between study estimates. This heterogeneity was not explained by any of 13 methodological moderators identified by previous reviews, but it was associated with researcher affiliation, test of moderators (QM) (15) = 57.09, p < .001. There are at least two possible explanations for these results: (a) Neonatal imitation exists and its detection varies as a function of uncaptured methodological factors common to a limited set of studies, and (2) neonatal imitation does not exist and the overall positive result is an artifact of high researcher degrees of freedom.

新生儿模仿是人类发展和社会行为的许多理论解释的基石，但在过去的 40 年里，它的存在一直存在争议。为了检查本研究中不一致的结果的可能解释，我们进行了多层次的荟萃分析，综合了 33 个独立的人类新生儿样本的 336 个效应大小，在 26 篇文章中报告。荟萃分析发现了新生儿模仿的重要证据（d = 0.68, 95% CI = [0.39, 0.96], p < .001），但研究估计之间存在显着异质性。这种异质性没有被之前评论确定的 13 个方法学调节器中的任何一个解释，但它与研究人员隶属关系、调节器测试 ( QM ) (15) = 57.09、p < .001。对这些结果至少有两种可能的解释：(a) 存在新生儿模仿，其检测因有限研究中常见的未捕获方法学因素而异，(2) 不存在新生儿模仿，总体阳性结果是高研究人员自由度的神器。