Do I get what you get? Learning about the effects of self-performed and observed actions in infancy

The present study investigated whether infants learn the effects of other persons' actions like they do for their own actions, and whether infants transfer observed action-effect relations to their own actions. Nine-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-olds explored an object that allowed two actions, and that produced a certain salient effect after each action. In a self-exploration group, infants explored the object directly, whereas in two observation groups, infants first watched an adult model acting on the object and obtaining a certain effect with each action before exploring the objects by themselves. In one observation group, the infants' actions were followed by the same effects as the model's actions, but in the other group, the action-effect mapping for the infant was reversed to that of the model. The results showed that the observation of the model had an impact on the infants' exploration behavior from 12 months, but not earlier, and that the specific relations between observed actions and effects were acquired by 15 months. Thus, around their first birthday infants learn the effects of other persons' actions by observation, and they transfer the observed action-effect relations to their own actions in the second year of life.     

Mister Bixby,Monsieur Bernard,and Some Other 19th Century Scientist–Philosophers on Knowledge-Based Actions

Summary  Following Mr. Bixby and some other 19th century scientist– philosophers such as Claude Bernard, relevant scientific actions should, as a matter of primary importance, be explained with reference to the competence and not to the intentions of those involved. The background is a reliabilist virtue approach – a widespread tendency in 19th century epistemology and philosophy of science. Bixby’s approach includes a critique of some constructivist arguments and establishes a mutually supportive connection to conceptions of scientific progress.     

Perception and production of object-related grasping in 6-month-olds

In this study, 6-month-olds’ perception of an object-related human grasping action was compared with their level of grasping performance using a within-participants design. In the action perception task, infants were presented with the video of an actor’s grasping movement toward an occluded target object. Subsequently, an expected and an unexpected final state of this grasping movement were presented simultaneously, and infants’ looking times were measured. In the action production task, infants were presented with three graspable objects. Infants’ grasping behavior was coded to be either palmar or thumb-opposite grasping. Results indicate that infants who were already able to perform a thumb-opposite grasp differentiated between the two final states in the action perception task by looking longer toward the unexpected final state. In contrast, infants who showed only palmar grasps looked equally long toward both final states. This finding supports the assumption that action perception and action control are already closely related in infants as young as 6 months.     

Hylomorphism without forms? A critical notice of Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events

Abstract

Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts develops amorphic hylomorphism. I critically discuss three of its main themes. One theme is its attempt to do the work of form without forms. A second theme is the requirement that hylomorphs have ‘metabolisms at work’. A third theme is the use of artifacts as the paradigms for hylomorphs. I will raise some criticisms of each of these themes. Although the themes might at first appear disconnected, I believe the third underwrites the first two. So the criticisms of the third theme also bear on the rest.     

La croyance au monde juste comme facteur explicatif de diverses réactions à des injustices professionnelles

The belief in a just world is defined as the tendency to consider that “people get what they deserve and deserve what they get”, i.e. to consider that the world is, globally, a place of justice. Facing an individual unjustly victim of negative events and for whom it seems impossible to restore the justice objectively, we frequently deny the existence of the unjustice, even if we say the responsible of what he gets. But if we can react by adopting “passive” reactions (using the victim’s moral or behavioral responsibility, as in Lerner, or evocating a future favoring the victim,..), we can also adopt “active” strategies which can lead to an objective re-establishment of the justice. In the present study, we examined the influence of the degree of the belief in the just world on the selected strategy facing professional injustices. And effectively, our results indicate a some preferences in the use of such or strategy, preferences accentuated by the gender and the professional statute.     

Informational constraints shape emergent functional behaviours during performance of interceptive actions in team sports

Objectives

This study aimed to explain how defenders intercept the trajectory of a passing ball by understanding how they coupled their actions to critical information sources in a competitive performance setting in team sports.

Design

Time series data on movement displacements of fifteen senior male futsal performers were recorded and digitized during nine competitive futsal games.

Method

Performance was recorded by a digital camera and digitized with TACTO software. The spatial-temporal dynamics of performers during ten intercepted and ten non-intercepted passes were compared. Time to ball interception was calculated by the difference between the time of each defender to an interception point in ball trajectory and the time of the ball’s arrival at the same interception point. Initial distances between defenders and ball and velocity data of defenders and ball over time were also recorded.

Results

Time to ball interception revealed positive values when passes were not intercepted, and negative to zero values when passes were intercepted. At the moment of pass initiation defenders’ distances to the ball constrained their possibilities for successful interception. Analysis of defenders’ adaptations to the environment revealed that continuous changes in the defenders’ velocities constrained their success of the interception.

Conclusions

Intercepted passes seemed to be influenced by the continuous regulation of a defender’s velocity relative to the ball’s trajectory. Time to ball interception is a variable that captured the emergent functional behaviours of players attempting to intercept the trajectory of a pass in the team sport of futsal.     

Keeping the end in mind: Preliminary brain and behavioral evidence for broad attention to endpoints in pre-linguistic infants

Infants must learn to carve events at their joints to best understand who is doing what to whom or whether an object or agent has reached its intended goal. Recent behavioral research demonstrates that infants do not see the world as a movie devoid of meaning, but rather as a series of sub-events that include agents moving in different manners along paths from sources to goals. This research uses behavioral and electrophysiological methods to investigate infants’ (10–14 months) attention to disruptions within relatively unfamiliar human action that does not rely on goal-objects to signal attainment (i.e., Olympic figure skating). Infants’ visual (Study 1, N = 48) and neurophysiological (Study 2, N = 21) responses to pauses at starting points, endpoints, and within-action locations were recorded. Both measures revealed differential responses to pauses at endpoints relative to pauses elsewhere in the action (i.e., starting point; within-action). Eye-tracking data indicated that infants’ visual attention was greater for events containing pauses at endpoints relative to events with pauses at starting points or within-actions. ERP activity reflecting perceptual processes in early-latency windows (<200 ms) and memory updating processes in long-latency windows (700−1000 ms) showed differential activation to disruptions at the end of a figure-skating action compared to other locations. Mid-latency windows (250−750 ms), in contrast, showed enhanced activation at frontal regions across conditions, suggesting electrophysiological resources may have been recruited to encode disruptions within unfamiliar dynamic human action. Combined, results hint at broad sensitivity to endpoints as a mechanism that supports infants’ proclivity for carving continuous and complex event streams into meaningful units. Findings have potential implications for language development as these units are mapped onto budding linguistic representations. We discuss empirical and methodological contributions for action perception and address potential merits and pitfalls of applying behavioral techniques in conjunction with brain-based measures to study infant development.     

Formalising a hypothesis for the development of anticipatory skill in time-constrained interceptive actions: Implications for the design of junior sport

When professional athletes strike a ball in tennis, cricket or baseball, the high temporal demands often necessitate the need to exploit pre-ball-flight information in order to anticipate the ball's trajectory. Despite the wealth of research probing anticipatory behaviour in sport, our understanding of when, how or why anticipatory skill develops is limited. In this article, we sought to formalise a hypothesis on the development of anticipatory skill. Using empirical temporal data from tennis, cricket and baseball, we propose that the temporal demands of the task dictate an athlete's propensity to anticipate. We then outline the implications of this hypothesis as it relates to junior sport. Notably, we question whether current playing dimensions in junior sport impose temporal demands that are sufficient to elicit anticipatory behaviour. Using tennis, cricket and baseball as examples, we illustrate differences in temporal demands between the junior and professional game and present implications for anticipation. Our discussion challenges the current junior sport experience as it relates to developing anticipatory skill.     

Children's kinematic false memories

ABSTRACT

Individuals misrecognise as seen the never-presented natural continuation of an action. These false memories derive from the running of kinematic mental models of the actions seen, which rest on motor inferences from implicit knowledge. We verified an implied prediction: kinematic false memories should be detectable even in children. The participants in our experiments first observed photos in which actors were about to perform actions on objects. At recognition they were presented with the original photos, plus (a) distractors representing the unseen natural continuation of the original actions, (b) distractors representing the beginning of other actions on the same objects and (c) distractors representing completed different actions on the same objects. In contrast to the original studies in which participants expressed their confidence in recognition, in our experiments the participants catgorirzed the action as seen or not seen. After replicating the original results with the dichotomous recognition task (Experiment 1), we detected spontaneous false memories also in children (Experiment 2).     

Newborns modulate their crawling in response to their native language but not another language

Human newborns can propel themselves to their mother's breast when positioned skin to skin on her abdomen just after birth. For decades, researchers have considered this primitive crawling behavior a spinal reflex, immune to supra spinal control. However, recent research suggests that neonatal crawling is already responsive to visual and olfactory stimuli processed at a supra spinal level. Here we report that a few hours post birth, French newborns can also modulate their crawling in response to their native language – a source of information that is processed supra-spinally. The crawling patterns of 23 French-born newborns were recorded on video and via an infrared motion capture system during two randomly ordered 2-min trials. The newborns were secured on a mini skateboard to facilitate arm and leg movements during their crawling propulsion. They heard a repetitive sequence of the same sentences either in French, their native language, or in English, a rhythmically different and hence discriminable unfamiliar language, on each trial. In French, compared to English, crawling was enhanced, with significantly more arm and leg steps and significantly more and larger trunk rotations in the cephalo-caudal axis. Moreover, newborns rotated their heads and trunk toward the appropriate loud speaker when hearing French but not English. These preliminary findings suggest that newborn crawling is not a simple stereotyped reflex under spinal control, but a complex pattern that can be modulated in response to higher-order, supra-spinally processed stimuli. The findings open fascinating questions about the range of stimuli to which newborn crawling is responsive.