Journal
COGNITION
Volume 114, Issue 2, Pages 197-206Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.09.004
Keywords
Action understanding; Learning; Direct matching; Eye tracking; Experience; Feeding anticipation; Teleological stance; Mirror neurons
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Six- and 12-month-old infant's eye movements were recorded as they observed feeding actions being performed in a rational or non-rational manner. Twelve-month-olds fixated the goal of these actions before the food arrived (anticipation); the latency of these gaze shifts being dependent (r=.69) on infants life experience being feed. In addition, 6- and 12-month-olds dilated their pupil during observation of non-rational feeding actions. This effect could not be attributed to light differences or differences in familiarity, but was interpreted to reflect sympathetic-like activity and arousal caused by a violation of infant's expectations about rationality. We argue that evaluation of rationality requires less experience than anticipations of action goals, suggesting a dual process account of preverbal infants' everyday action understanding. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available