First-person action experience reveals sensitivity to action efficiency in prereaching infants.

ABSTRACT: Do infants learn to interpret others' actions through their own experience producing goal-directed action, or does some knowledge of others' actions precede first-person experience? Several studies report that motor experience enhances action understanding, but the nature of this effect is not well understood. The present research investigates what is learned during early motoric production, and it tests whether knowledge of goal-directed actions, including an assumption that actors maximize efficiency given environmental constraints, exists before experience producing such actions. Three-month-old infants (who cannot yet effectively reach for and grasp objects) were given novel experience retrieving objects that rested on a surface with no barriers. They were then shown an actor reaching

SUBMITTER: Skerry AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3831953 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature