Falk's hominin mother-infant model presupposes an emerging infant capacity to perceive and learn from afforded gestures and vocalizations. Unlike back-riding offspring of other primates, who were in no need to decenter their own body-centered perspective, a mirror neurons system may have been adapted in hominin infants to subserve the kind of (m)other-centered mirroring we now see manifested by human infants soon after birth.
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BRATEN, Stein, 2004. Hominin infant decentration hypothesis: mirror neurons system adapted to subserve mother-centered participation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2004. Vol. 27, no. 4, p. 508–509.