The first step in penetrating beyond the capacity to recognize the facial expression of emotion, is the generation of that same facial expression at appropriate moments. The key to this stage is the appropriateness of the expression.
Newborns respond to the sound of another child crying in turn with their own crying.
Between 4 and 8 months a child will mimic the emotional facial expressions of their care giver. He thought of the expressions in newborns as a reflex rather than a true display of an emotion. Piaget views imitation as the bridge from the sensorimotor response to intelligence. When the child becomes proficient at imitation, she will begin to imitate internally, thereby forming a mental representation of the expression. This signals the internalization of the emotion, value, or belief.