Researchers at the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California-San Diego have long suspected that smiling babies are 'up to something' - so they turned to a robo-baby to figure out what it was.
According to their research in Plos One the researchers got thirteen mother and infant pairs together and, after observing them together, ran them through a series of tests using the robot.
What they found was that while mothers time their smiles to try and maximise the time both they and their babies spend smiling - the babies are really just interested in keeping their mothers smiling.
Which means that they tend to stop smiling once they have achieved their goal.
"When mother smiling occurs, the infant smiling signal is no longer required. It is also possible that infants tend to cease smiling after a mother smile in order to regulate positive affective arousal," the researchers wrote.
Why is this fairly interesting? Because what it shows is that independent thoughts and goals can arise relatively early in a child's life.
"The discovery of goal-oriented interactive behaviour in infants under six months of age - and the elucidation of the goals underlying those behaviours - could shed light on our understanding of the development of typical and atypical social behaviour," according to the study.
According to the researchers, this could help doctors in diagnosing autism spectrum disorders.
"The analysis could help disambiguate whether young infants who will go on to develop an ASD have more object-oriented and less socially-oriented goals than infants who do not go on to an ASD outcome," the researchers conclude.
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