3-185 - Body representations in development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Our ability to perceive and represent the human body plays fundamental roles in a wide range of psychological processes many of which have received extensive consideration in developmental psychology. Body representations play central roles in skilled action, perception of the self and the embodied environment, social cognitive processes and also in developmental psychopathologies including eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder. It is therefore surprising that body representations have until recently received relatively little treatment in developmental psychology. This symposium will highlight some of the most important recent advances in the study of the development of body representations. Paper 1 considers infants' developing representations of their own bodies, focussing on recent findings concerning the development of an ability to perceive the location of touches to the body in the external spatial environment. Paper 2 discusses infants' representations of other people's bodies and in particular the emergence of ability to process the configuration and proportions of the visual human body. Paper 3 shows how the birth order of children leads to distortions in parents' perceptions of their children’s body size and age, discussing how such misperceptions may have important consequences for development. Paper 4 describes cortical activation in infancy that is a likely precursor of mature body awareness. This paper elucidates the brain’s role in the development of the multisensory underpinnings of body representations. The chairs will facilitate discussion throughout the symposium, setting aside time to integrate the talks and draw out common themes concerning the role of body representations in development.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chairs

• Andrew J. Bremner, Goldsmiths College, University of London

• Jordy Kaufman, Swinburne University of Technology

Individual Presentations

• Developing a sense of one's own body in the external spatial world - Presenting Author: Andrew J. Bremner, Goldsmiths College, University of London; Jannath Begum Ali, Goldsmiths College, University of London; Charles Spence, University of Oxford

• Infants’ representations of the human body shape - Presenting Author: Michelle Heron-Delaney, 10Charge; Virginia P Slaughter, University of Queensland

• Parental representations of children's body size and age - Presenting Author: Jordy Kaufman, Swinburne University of Technology

• Neural mechanisms of body awareness in infancy - Presenting Author: Maria Laura Filippetti, Birkbeck College; Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck College; Teresa Farroni, University of Padua, Italy; Mark H Johnson, Birkbeck College