Eighteen-month-olds integrate verbal cues into their action processing: Evidence from ERPs and mu power |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Germany;2. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany;1. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy;2. Max Planck Institute, Leipzig, Germany;3. Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium;4. Freie Universität Berlin, Germany;5. Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy;1. Department of Infant Development, New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, United States;2. Department of Infant Development, New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities and Department of Pediatrics, Richmond University Medical Center, United States;1. Univ Rennes, Normandie Univ, CNRS, EthoS (Ethologie animale et humaine) - UMR 6552, F-35000, Rennes, France;2. Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire, Pôle de la Femme, de la Mère et de l''Enfant, Brest, France;3. Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences de la Santé, Laboratoire de Neurosciences de Brest - EA 4685, Brest, France;1. School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, UK;2. Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group, Centre for Biomedical Research (CBMR), University of Algarve, Portugal;3. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands;4. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands;5. Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal |
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| Abstract: | Behavioral research has shown that infants use both behavioral cues and verbal cues when processing the goals of others’ actions. For instance, 18-month-olds selectively imitate an observed goal-directed action depending on its (in)congruence with a model’s previous verbal announcement of a desired action goal. This EEG-study analyzed the electrophysiological underpinnings of these behavioral findings on the two functional levels of conceptual action processing and motor activation. Mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude and mu-frequency band power were analyzed while 18-month-olds (N = 38) watched videos of an adult who performed one out of two potential actions on a novel object. In a within-subjects design, the action demonstration was preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent verbally announced action goal (e.g., “up” or “down” and upward movement). Overall, ERP negativity did not differ between conditions, but a closer inspection revealed that in two subgroups, about half of the infants showed a broadly distributed increased mid-latency ERP negativity (indicating enhanced conceptual action processing) for either the congruent or the incongruent stimuli, respectively. As expected, mu power at sensorimotor sites was reduced (indicating enhanced motor activation) for congruent relative to incongruent stimuli in the entire sample. Both EEG correlates were related to infants’ language skills. Hence, 18-month-olds integrate action-goal-related verbal cues into their processing of others’ actions, at the functional levels of both conceptual processing and motor activation. Further, cue integration when inferring others’ action goals is related to infants’ language proficiency. |
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| Keywords: | EEG Infancy Social cues Verbs Action processing Social learning Event-related potentials (ERPs) Mu power Motor activation |
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