1-145 - Mechanisms Underlying the Development of Action Understanding in Infancy

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Understanding the intentional nature of human action is a critical conceptual achievement that develops gradually across the first year of life (Woodward et al., 2009). A large body of evidence has documented the systematic emergence of this understanding across infancy (Brandone & Wellman, 2009; Hamlin et al., 2008; Woodward, 1998) and its significance for later social cognition (Aschersleben et al., 2008; Krogh-Jespersen et al., 2015). Although much is known about the timeline of infants’ emerging action understanding, critical questions remain concerning the mechanisms underlying this developmental process.

The current symposium presents the latest research from multiple unique perspectives on how infants learn and think about others’ actions. The first paper considers motor mechanisms that contribute to the development of action understanding, examining how active training experience and variability in motor development impact infants’ reasoning about the goal of others' tool use actions. The second paper explores how infants utilize their social context to build an understanding of others’ actions, reporting cross-sectional and longitudinal relations between infants’ action understanding and their experience in triadic interactions with social partners. The third paper considers the mechanisms by which infants generalize their existing action knowledge through a process of comparison to make predictions about novel actions. Finally, the fourth paper explores the neuronal dynamics that underlie infants’ learning from and about others’ actions.

Collectively, these studies shed important new light on how a diverse set of motor, social, cognitive, and neuronal processes give rise to an understanding of others’ actions during infancy.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Amanda C Brandone, Lehigh University

Individual Presentations

• The Benefits of Active Experience in Action Understanding - Presenting Author: Haerin Chung, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Courtney Filippi, NIMH; Non-Presenting Author: Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago

• Triadic Interactions Support Infants’ Emerging Understanding of Intentional Actions - Presenting Author: Amanda C Brandone, Lehigh University; Non-Presenting Author: Wyntre Stout, Lehigh University; Non-Presenting Author: Kelsey Moty, New York University

• Bear or Ball, What Will She Grab? Infants’ Comparison and Prediction of Others’ Goal-Directed Actions - Presenting Author: Charlotte Findlay, Cardiff University; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah A Gerson, Cardiff University

• Neuronal Dynamics of Infants’ Understanding and Learning from Others’ Actions - Presenting Author: Moritz Köster, Free University Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Miriam Langeloh, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences; Non-Presenting Author: Christian Kliesch, Lancaster University, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences; Non-Presenting Author: Patricia Kanngiesser, Freie Universität Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Stefanie Hoehl, University of Vienna