Next we found that infants reach more often for puppets who were *not* imitated by a person compared to those that were imitated.

Before we began, we predicted that infants would be at chance when they were deciding between those who were imitated and those who were not. We did *not* predict that they would reach for those who were not imitated.

We later found that infants *do* prefer individuals who are imitated by their parents (www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...).

Their preference for the non-imitated puppet in this study may be due to a preference for individuals who are more 'socially available' (We don't, however, find support for this hypothesis in S2, when it comes to synchrony).

Next, we found that infants *do not* prefer those who comfort. This was contrary to our predcitions, but this null data made us wonder....

Is comforting a cue of a person's traits? Or should we think about it as indicative of an intimate *relationship*? We decided to pursue this question with saliva-sharing(www.science.org/doi/full/10....)

I hope you enjoyed reading this thread! It was fun to revisit this old data and to remember that sometimes null or unexpected results lead to really fun projects even if frustrating at the time.

Thank you to Alex Mackiel and Amanda Woodward, who also wondered about the social availability hyp. in their forthcoming commentary on my paper a bout relationships (my paper here, www.cambridge.org/core/service...) not yet their commentary).