Infants' Processing of Dynamic Human Action

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Everyday human action is strikingly complex. In the course of accomplishing our everyday goals and intentions, we move rapidly about the world contacting an enormous array of diverse objects for different purposes, with few pauses to demarcate where one action ends and the next begins. Despite such complexity, when we observe others in action, we readily process the complex motion stream with little conscious effort. As yet, much remains mysterious about the cognitive mechanisms that enable such skilled processing of dynamic human action. One intriguing developmental question is how infants even make a start at identifying distinct acts within the continuous motion stream. This research will pursue two primary goals. The first is to investigate whether infants possess skills for identifying individual actions within the continuous motion stream, and the second is to discover how they might do so. The research will advance knowledge on several fronts. For one, the research will provide new information about basic action-processing skills that are fundamental to children's social and cognitive development. As well, the research will lead to the development of new methods that may ultimately assist in understanding and detecting deficits in action processing; for example, such deficits may be a factor in autism and certain forms of brain damage acquired later in life. Improved understanding of the nature of such deficits may make it possible to design more effective interventions for such individuals, hence improving social and cognitive outcomes.