Predictive action tracking without motor experience in 8-month-old infants

Klerk, Carina de; Southgate, Victoria; Csibra, Gergely

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2016.09.010

Cited by 40 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 65 publications

(139 reference statements)

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“…In contrast, direct‐matching accounts suppose that observing a familiar action directly activates the corresponding motor representation, which then enables goal prediction (e.g., Falck‐Ytter et al, 2006). However, EEG studies have revealed motor‐system activation when 9‐month‐olds observed a mechanical claw reaching for an object (Southgate & Begus, 2013) and when 8‐month‐olds observed a walking movement they could not yet perform (de Klerk, Southgate, & Csibra, 2016), which supports the cue‐based accounts’ assumption that motor‐system activation is possible without direct matching.…”

Section: The Impact Of Agency Cues: Self‐propelledness Equifinality Salient Action Effectsmentioning

confidence: 66%

Infants’ Goal Prediction for Simple Action Events: The Role of Experience and Agency Cues

Elsner

Adam

2020

Topics in Cognitive Science

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Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object‐directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants’ predictive gaze‐shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to‐be‐obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By about 6 months of age, infants show goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants’ ability for action‐goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non‐human agents (e.g., object‐directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self‐propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action‐event perspective. In particular, infants’ goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom‐up processing of perceptual information and top‐down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions.

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Section: The Impact Of Agency Cues: Self‐propelledness Equifinality Salient Action Effectsmentioning

confidence: 66%

Infants’ Goal Prediction for Simple Action Events: The Role of Experience and Agency Cues

Elsner

Adam

2020

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…On this view, prediction would be accomplished by using our motor system as an internal forward model. However, there is evidence challenging this approach by showing that motor experience is not necessarily required to anticipate action unfolding [6,7] and that similar predictive performance can be achieved possibly by relying on previous observational experience with others' actions [8]. Nevertheless, despite differences in the role of motor experience on action prediction, most of these views collectively assume that the motor system or, at least, some related structures (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual priors do not modulate action prediction in children with autism

et al. 2019

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Bayesian accounts of autism suggest that this disorder may be rooted in an impaired ability to estimate the probability of future events, possibly owing to reduced priors. Here, we tested this hypothesis within the action domain in children with and without autism using a behavioural paradigm comprising a familiarization and a testing phase. During familiarization, children observed videos depicting a child model performing actions in diverse contexts. Crucially, within this phase, we implicitly biased action-context associations in terms of their probability of co-occurrence. During testing, children observed the same videos but drastically shortened (i.e. reduced amount of kinematics information) and were asked to infer action unfolding. Since during the testing phase movement kinematics became ambiguous, we expected children's responses to be biased to contextual priors, thus compensating for perceptual uncertainty. While this probabilistic effect was present in controls, no such modulation was observed in autistic children, overall suggesting an impairment in using contextual priors when predicting other peoples' actions in uncertain environments.

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“…To assess infants' neural motor activity during action observation and execution consistent with previous research (Debnath et al, 2019;Marshall et al, 2011;Meyer et al, 2022), our analyses focused on mu power, by measuring baseline-corrected spectral power in the 6-9Hz alpha frequency band in channels overlaying sensorimotor (Central) regions (C3 = E29, E30, E35, E36, E37, E41, E42; C4 = E87, E93, E103, E104, E105, E110, E111; Figure 3). We did not include the midline channel (Cz) because the activity in Cz is found to be associated with and modulated by leg movements in infants (van Elk et al, 2008;de Klerk et al, 2016) while C3 and C4 are found to be associated with hand and arm movements in infancy (Saby et al, 2013). Mu power during action observation was calculated for the following time windows: anticipatory (-1000ms to 0ms) time window during which E1 is still and no movement is happening, and movement (0ms to 1000ms) during which E1 starts to produce the action (grasp condition: 0 to 500ms entails E1's reach to the toy, and 500 to 1000ms entails the E1's grasp completion of bringing the toy closer to her; cane-use condition: 0 to 1000ms entails E1's cane pulling action).…”

Section: Time-frequency Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Together, these findings highlight the potential role of motor experience in modulating mu suppression during action observation. However, another body of studies with infants at the same age (9 months) and analyzing neural activity in the same frequency range (6-9Hz) recorded over the sensorimotor cortex (central sites), found mu suppression when infants observe actions and events that they have not had active experience with (de Klerk et al, 2016;Southgate & Begus, 2013;Virji-Babul et al, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…using baselines that control for attentional demands) as an additional approach to distinguish action-specific processes from visual processes (Fox et al, 2016). Infant researchers have reported alpha activity recorded over multiple regions (Southgate & Begus, 2013;Cannon, et al, 2016;Yoo et al, 2015;de Klerk et al, 2016); however, it is rarely the case that additional approaches are endorsed to ensure that activity recorded over central and occipital sites are reliably independent (but see de Klerk et al, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural Correlates of Familiar and Unfamiliar Action in Infancy

Chung¹,

Meyer²,

Debnath³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Behavioral evidence shows that experience with an action shapes action perception. Neural mirroring has been suggested as a mechanism underlying this behavioral phenomenon. Suppression of EEG power in the mu frequency band, an index of motor activation, typically reflects neural mirroring. However, contradictory findings exist regarding the association between mu suppression and motor familiarity in infant EEG studies. In this study, we investigated the neural underpinnings reflecting the role of familiarity on action perception. We measured neural processing of familiar (grasp) and novel (tool-use) actions in 9-and-12-month-old infants. Specifically, we measured infants’ distinct motor/visual activity and explored functional connectivity associated with these processes. Mu suppression was stronger for grasping than tool-use, while significant mu and occipital alpha (indexing visual activity) suppression were evident for both actions. Interestingly, selective visual-motor functional connectivity was found during observation of familiar action, a pattern not observed for novel action. Thus, the neural correlates of perception of familiar actions may be best understood in terms of a functional neural network, rather than isolated regional activity.Our findings provide novel insights on analytic approaches for identifying motor-specific neural activity while also considering neural networks involved in observing motorically familiar versus actions.

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Predictive action tracking without motor experience in 8-month-old infants

Cited by 40 publications

References 65 publications

Infants’ Goal Prediction for Simple Action Events: The Role of Experience and Agency Cues

Infants’ Goal Prediction for Simple Action Events: The Role of Experience and Agency Cues

Contextual priors do not modulate action prediction in children with autism

Neural Correlates of Familiar and Unfamiliar Action in Infancy

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