Abstract
The present study asks when infants are able to selectively anticipate the goals of observed actions, and how this ability relates to infants’ own abilities to produce those specific actions. Using eye-tracking technology to measure on-line anticipation, 6-, 8- and 10-month-old infants and a control group of adults were tested while observing an adult reach with a whole hand grasp, a precision grasp or a closed fist towards one of two different sized objects. The same infants were also given a comparable action production task. All infants showed proactive gaze to the whole hand grasps, with increased degrees of proactivity in the older groups. Gaze proactivity to the precision grasps, however, was present from 8 months of age. Moreover, the infants’ ability in performing precision grasping strongly predicted their ability in using the actor’s hand shape cues to differentially anticipate the goal of the observed action, even when age was partialled out. The results are discussed in terms of the specificity of action anticipation, and the fine-grained relationship between action production and action perception.
Highlights
In this paper we address two questions that are central to current debates about action perception in infants
The precise nature of the action experience and the manner or age at which it might influence action perception is still under debate, with explanations ranging from the perceptual learning of statistical regularities [3], the constraints of systemic changes in the motor system [4] and the influence of action on perceptual fields [5,6]
A link between action production and action perception has been shown as early as 3 months of age using a looking time measure [7]
Summary
A link between action production and action perception has been shown as early as 3 months of age using a looking time measure [7]. Falck-Ytter and colleagues [12] showed that 12-month-olds –but not 6-montholds– could visually anticipate the action when observing another person transferring an object into a container. They explained this in terms of developing motor representational capacities, but it is unclear whether it is the specific ability to put objects in containers that differentiates the 6- and 12-month-olds or whether it is a more general late development of a correspondence between production and perception. Proactive gaze to others’ grasps co-occurred with the infants’ ability to grasp with one rather than two hands [13]
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