3-013 - Contingency Detection in Infancy: Developmental Origins and its Role in Self-Awareness, Action Processing, and Social Interactions

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Self-other differentiation is a developmental milestone in infants’ development. The ability to detect intermodal contingencies (e.g., the relation between proprioceptive and visual feedback of own movements) has a key role in this context. While it is well-established that infants’ ability to detect intermodal contingencies is present a few months after birth, open questions remain regarding the onset of, and the neural mechanisms underlying contingency detection as well as its role in social interaction and self-recognition.

The first speaker will present work on contingency detection. Over a series of studies, newborns’ sensitivity to temporal and spatial intermodal contingency in the context of body-related information is demonstrated. The second speaker will present a study that investigated the role of contingent visuomotor experience in the development of perceptual-motor couplings, by manipulating whether infants received contingent or non-contingent visuomotor experience with a novel action. Results show that the strength of the visuomotor contingency experienced during training predicted the amount of sensorimotor cortex activation during action observation. The third speaker will present longitudinal data on the relation between contingency detection and later self-recognition in the mirror and a real-time video display. The fourth speaker will examine the relation between mothers’ contingent behavior during mother-infant interaction and infants’ social bids. Higher mothers’ vocal contingencies predicted the amount of social bids made by infants in sequences of interaction. Together, these studies provide evidence for the key role of contingency detection in the context of self-other differentiation, action processing, and self-awareness.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chairs

• Norbert Zmyj, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

• Maria Laura Filippetti, Birkbeck College

Individual Presentations

• Body Perception in Newborns: Sensitivity to Temporal and Spatial Contingencies - Presenting Author: Maria Laura Filippetti, Birkbeck College; Giulia Orioli, University of Padua, Italy; Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck College; Mark H Johnson, Birkbeck College; Teresa Farroni, University of Padua, Italy

• The Role of Visuomotor Contingency in the Development of Perceptual-Motor Couplings in Infancy - Presenting Author: Carina de Klerk, Birkbeck College; Mark H Johnson, Birkbeck College; Celia M Heyes, All Souls College & Dept of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford; Victoria Southgate, Birkbeck College, University of London

• Is Contingency Detection in the First Year of Life a Precursor of Later Self-Recognition? - Presenting Author: Sarah Klein-Radukic, Ruhr-Universität Bochum; Norbert Zmyj, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

• The Effect of Maternal Contingency in two Modalities on Infants' Emerging Self Efficacy - Presenting Author: Ann E Bigelow, St Francis Xavier University; Michelle Power, st. Francis Xavier university