On a multistable dynamic model of behavioral and perceptual infant development (original) (raw)
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On the relation between action selection and movement control in 5-to 9-month-old infants
Experimental Brain …, 2011
Although 5-month-old infants select action modes that are adaptive to the size of the object (i.e., oneor two-handed reaching), it has largely remained unclear whether infants of this age control the ensuing movement to the size of the object (i.e., scaling of the aperture between hands). We examined 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds' reaching behaviors to gain more insight into the developmental changes occurring in the visual guidance of action mode selection and movement control, and the relationship between these processes. Infants were presented with a small set of objects (i.e., 2, 3, 7, and 8 cm) and a large set of objects (i.e., 6, 9, 12, and 15 cm). For the first set of objects, it was found that the infants more often performed two-handed reaches for the larger objects based on visual information alone (i.e., before making contact with the object), thus showing adaptive action mode selection relative to object size. Kinematical analyses of the twohanded reaches for the second set of objects revealed that inter-trial variance in aperture between the hands decreased with the approach toward the object, indicating that infants' reaching is constrained by the object. Subsequent analysis showed that between hand aperture scaled to object size, indicating that visual control of the movement is adjusted to object size in infants as young as 5 months. Individual analyses indicated that the two processes were not dependent and followed distinct developmental trajectories. That is, adaptive selection of an action mode was not a prerequisite for appropriate aperture scaling, and vice versa. These findings are consistent with the idea of two separate and independent visual systems (Milner and Goodale in Neuropsychologia 46:774-785, 2008) during early infancy.
Commentary: Development of Perception-Action Systems and General Principles of Pattern Formation
Child Development, 1993
Our commentary on this special issue devoted to Developmental Biodynamics: Brain, Body, and Behavior Connections is divided into 3 main sections. The first section is an overview of the individual contributions. 5 major themes are identified: (1) inappropriateness of computational treatments of development and the need for more biologically and physically relevant treatments;
Psychological Bulletin, 2000
Despite impressive demonstrations of human infants' intersensory capabilities over the past several decades, there has been little focus on the contributions of prenatal and postnatal experience or the specific developmental processes underlying the emergence of intersensory functioning. Research with nonhuman animals has, however, provided a number of advances in understanding early intersensory perception. The authors explore the value of a comparative, convergent-operations approach to the study of early intersensory perception and examine how this approach has highlighted the study of (a) prenatal factors, (b) brain-behavior relations, and (c) context and experience variables contributing to infants' intersensory responsiveness. Examples of how human and animal research programs can cross-fertilize one another in their attempts to understand developmental processes underlying intersensory perception are considered. After all, it is only by comparing that we can judge, for our knowledge rests entirely on the relations that things have with others that are similar or different, and we should realize that if there were no animals, the nature of man would be even more incomprehensible. ~G. L. Buffon, Historie Naturelle Most objects and events in the world provide multimodal stimulation and evoke a diversity of visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory impressions simultaneously. How does the young infant determine which patterns of sensory stimulation belong together and originate from a single object or event and which are unrelated? What causes some stimulation to be salient, attended, processed further, and remembered, and other stimulation to be ignored by infants? Although developmental science is far from conclusively answering these important questions, there has been an increasing research focus on the study of the intermodal capabilities of human infants over the past several decades (see, e.g.,
Piagets A-nicht-B Paradigma untersucht den Einfluss vom Arbeitsgedächtnis und von Handlungsgewohnheiten auf motorische Entscheidungen. Wir zeigen, dass der Gewohnheitaufbau (A Phase) wesentlich die Testphase (B) beeinflusst. Die Feinstruktur sogenannten spontanen Fehler (Greifen zu B obwohl A stimuliert wurde) deckt eine zugrundeliegende Anziehung zu früheren Handlungszielen auf. Die Einkopplung der Verhaltensgeschichte in die aktuelle Entscheidung erklären wir mittels der Dynamischen Feldtheorie durch ein mathematisches Modell neuronaler Aktivierungsverteilungen, die motorische Parameter wie die Greifrichtung darstellen. Motorische Entscheidungen entstehen unter Stimuluseinfluss und durch neuronale Wechselwirkung. Der einfache Lernmechanismus einer Gedächtnisspur erzeugt eine Tendenz zur Perseveration. So betrachtet, liefert das A-nicht-B Paradigma Einsichten in das Erlernen von zielgerichtetem Handeln, zu dessen Stabilisierung die motorische Geschichte entscheidend beiträgt.
Motor constraints on the development of perception-action matching in infant reaching
Infant Behavior and Development, 2000
Previous studies on reaching and grasping have suggested that infants need considerable experience at both seeing and touching in order to develop responses adapted to the environment. Such an account, however, does not reveal how appropriate perception-action matching emerges from these repeated experiences at seeing and touching. The present research addresses this issue by investigating the dynamics of perceiving and acting in 5-to 9-month-old infants as they saw, reached for, touched, and grasped objects of different sizes and texture. To gain insights into the mechanisms of change that underlie pattern formation, we observed infants' responses as a function of time, as infants reached for and manipulated objects successively. We found that the developmental process by which appropriate perception-action matching emerges is tied to important changes in the motor system. Before 8 months, infants' reaching responses are constrained by systemic motor tendencies that conflict with the process of perceptual-motor mapping. When these motor tendencies disappear, infants are able to use and integrate visual and haptic information to scale their actions to objects. These results are consistent with a dynamic systems approach, which views behavioral changes and their underlying psychological processes as the product of continuous tensions and interactions between the organism's own constraints and the characteristics of the task at hand.
乳幼児発達臨床センター年報 Research and Clinical Center For Child Development Annual Report, 1994
The goal of the article is to describe a research paradigm with respect to eyehand coordination. Basic concepts of ecological psychology (information and affordances), of non-linear dynamics (order parameter, control parameter and stabil• ity), and of the natural physical approach (the laws of control) are discussed. The article will conclude with a description of the research program as currently conducted within the proposed research paradigm.
Intra-individual variability and continuity of action and perception measures in infants
The development of action and perception, and their relation in infancy is a central research area in socio-cognitive sciences. In this Perspective Article, we focus on the developmental variability and continuity of action and perception. At group level, these skills have been shown to consistently improve with age. We would like to raise awareness for the issue that, at individual level, development might be subject to more variable changes. We present data from a longitudinal study on the perception and production of contralateral reaching skills of infants aged 7, 8, 9, and 12 months. Our findings suggest that individual development does not increase linearly for action or for perception, but instead changes dynamically. These non-continuous changes substantially affect the relation between action and perception at each measuring point and the respective direction of causality. This suggests that research on the development of action and perception and their interrelations needs to take into account individual variability and continuity more progressively.
Developmental changes in the discrimination of dynamic human actions in infancy
Developmental Science, 2011
Recent evidence suggests adults selectively attend to features of action, such as how a hand contacts an object, and less to configural properties of action, such as spatial trajectory, when observing human actions. The current research investigated whether this bias develops in infancy. We utilized a habituation paradigm to assess 4-month-old and 10-month-old infants' discrimination of action based on featural, configural, and temporal sources of action information. Younger infants were able to discriminate changes to all three sources of information, but older infants were only able to reliably discriminate changes to featural information. These results highlight a previously unknown aspect of early action processing, and suggest that action perception may undergo a developmental process akin to perceptual narrowing. Effective management of one's daily affairs requires efficient processing of the actions of others. Processing human action is critical for understanding others' goals and intentions, which are in turn crucial for navigating social situations. Since human action is inherently complex and dynamic in nature, a powerful cognitive system that utilizes both top-down and bottom-up processes likely underlies action analysis (Baldwin, 2005). While adults can make use of top-down information to guide their action processing and goal inference, infants lack much of this information, and must rely more heavily on bottom-up processes to analyze others' behavior. Thus, investigating how infants process the actions of others provides a window into the development of early social cognition. One aspect of infant action perception that has yet to be directly examined is action discrimination-that is, infants' ability to perceive differences among actions. We use the term action to refer to the intentional movements of a human agent in the execution of a goal, including the initiation, unfolding, and completion of the movements. Characterized as such, there are numerous properties of action that a human agent can vary: the spatial trajectory of their actions, the speed of their actions, the particular limb used, the kind of grasp used, etc. Exploring action discrimination in infancy can reveal what properties of action infants attend to and encode during their observation of other's behavior. For instance, do infants readily discriminate between actions that vary according to a single property, such as speed? Are they better able to discriminate changes in certain properties over other properties? The goal of the current research was to investigate what properties of action infants attend to when observing actions, and whether their attention during action observation changes across development. What is known about infants' action discrimination comes from research exploring infants' goal understanding. Infants' ability to discriminate actions on the basis of goal information changes across development. Woodward (1998) tested whether infants understand that actions are directed toward particular goals. In her study, infants were habituated to an actor
Exploration of the newborn's manual activity: A window onto early cognitive processes
Infant Behavior & Development, 2005
Neuronal group selection theory (NGST) proposals . Biologie de la conscience. Paris: Odile Jacob] focusing on variability are used to aid the understanding of the close relation existing at birth between cognitive endowments and haptic manual functioning. We report a series of experiments providing evidence for a manual activity characterised at birth by its variability: the neonate cyclical manual activity alternating opening and closing of the hand is defined as a general exploratory movement pattern (GEMP) that newborns use as an exploratory tool. This GEMP is sufficiently variable to offer a huge diversity in the object properties explored. This diversity allows, in turn, a cognitive process of comparison allowing neonates to unify their multimodal perception.