8,936 research outputs found

    The joint role of trained, untrained, and observed actions at the origins of goal recognition

    Get PDF
    Recent findings across a variety of domains reveal the benefits of self-produced experience on object exploration, object knowledge, attention, and action perception. The influence of active experience may be particularly important in infancy, when motor development is undergoing great changes. Despite the importance of self-produced experience, we know that infants and young children are eventually able to gain knowledge through purely observational experience. In the current work, three-month-old infants were given experience with object-directed actions in one of three forms and their recognition of the goal of grasping actions was then assessed in a habituation paradigm. All infants were given the chance to manually interact with the toys without assistance (a difficult task for most three-month-olds). Two of the three groups were then given additional experience with object-directed actions, either through active training (in which Velcro mittens helped infants act more efficiently) or observational training. Findings support the conclusion that self-produced experience is uniquely informative for action perception and suggest that individual differences in spontaneous motor activity may interact with observational experience to inform action perception early in life.PostprintPeer reviewe

    Why do infants imitate selectively? Neural correlates of infants’ action understanding in the head-touch paradigm

    Get PDF
    Imitation is an important social learning mechanism for young infants exploring the world. Interestingly, infants do not imitate every action they observe – they rather do so selectively. Fourteen-month-olds predominantly imitated an unusual and inefficient action (turning on a lamp with one’s forehead) when the model’s hands were free compared to when the model’s hands were occupied (Gergely et al., 2002). Behavioral scientists have proposed contrasting explanatory accounts, differing with regard to the assumed level of infants’ cognitive abilities. Rational-imitation accounts suggest that infants selectively imitate unusual actions because they are surprised by the inefficiency of the action (Gergely & Csibra, 2003). In contrast, non-rational imitation accounts propose that selective imitation depends on more basic factors such as motor abilities (Paulus et al., 2011a,b). The integrative model by Zmyj and Buttelmann (2014) represents the first attempt to put together these opposing theories. Both accounts may operate on different processing levels. Bottom-up processes are related to non-rational imitation accounts, whereas top-down processing is based on the assumptions of the rational-imitation accounts. Despite the large body of behavioral research on selective imitation, the question of what are the neural mechanisms underlying these processes remains unanswered. In my dissertation, I aimed to uncover the underlying cognitive processes during the observation of head-touch actions by recording infants’ neurophysiological responses in three empirical studies. To test the assumptions of the top-down processes linked to the rational-imitation accounts, I examined neural markers associated with violation of expectation (VOE) in an adaptation of the head-touch paradigm. Overall, results suggest that 12- to 14-month-old infants, but not 9-month-old infants, display VOE when observing a person performing an inefficient head touch. This VOE response is context-dependent and is elicited when the model’s hands are free but not when the hands are restrained. In Study 1, VOE has been linked to a reduction in mu power in response to the unexpected head touch. In Study 2, this finding was extended such that when 12- to 14-month-old infants observed an unexpected head touch, their brains responded with increased attentional engagement (enhanced Nc amplitude) and a detection of a semantic violation (N400 component). Finally, in Study 3, in the absence of contextual information, 1-year-olds discriminated between hand- and head-touch outcomes on the Nc component only. Thus, infants require information of the action context to detect semantic violations within the head-touch paradigm. To conclude, the studies presented in my dissertation have paved the way to further our understanding of infants’ action perception and observational learning. Understanding the neural mechanisms of infants’ action perception in more depth, will help us to adequately foster the ideal observational learning conditions of novel actions. The results of this dissertation suggest that presenting infants with surprising action means puts them in an optimal receptive state for knowledge acquisition

    The social attentional foundations of infant's learning from third-party social interactions

    Get PDF

    Developmental pathways to autism: a review of prospective studies of infants at risk

    Get PDF
    Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, and the presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Symptoms of ASD likely emerge from a complex interaction between pre-existing neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and the child's environment, modified by compensatory skills and protective factors. Prospective studies of infants at high familial risk for ASD (who have an older sibling with a diagnosis) are beginning to characterize these developmental pathways to the emergence of clinical symptoms. Here, we review the range of behavioral and neurocognitive markers for later ASD that have been identified in high-risk infants in the first years of life. We discuss theoretical implications of emerging patterns, and identify key directions for future work, including potential resolutions to several methodological challenges for the field. Mapping how ASD unfolds from birth is critical to our understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying this disorder. A more nuanced understanding of developmental pathways to ASD will help us not only to identify children who need early intervention, but also to improve the range of interventions available to them

    Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition

    Get PDF
    Reports findings from multiple neuroscientific studies on the impact of arts training on the enhancement of other cognitive capacities, such as reading acquisition, sequence learning, geometrical reasoning, and memory

    Relaxation Penalties and Priors for Plausible Modeling of Nonidentified Bias Sources

    Full text link
    In designed experiments and surveys, known laws or design feat ures provide checks on the most relevant aspects of a model and identify the target parameters. In contrast, in most observational studies in the health and social sciences, the primary study data do not identify and may not even bound target parameters. Discrepancies between target and analogous identified parameters (biases) are then of paramount concern, which forces a major shift in modeling strategies. Conventional approaches are based on conditional testing of equality constraints, which correspond to implausible point-mass priors. When these constraints are not identified by available data, however, no such testing is possible. In response, implausible constraints can be relaxed into penalty functions derived from plausible prior distributions. The resulting models can be fit within familiar full or partial likelihood frameworks. The absence of identification renders all analyses part of a sensitivity analysis. In this view, results from single models are merely examples of what might be plausibly inferred. Nonetheless, just one plausible inference may suffice to demonstrate inherent limitations of the data. Points are illustrated with misclassified data from a study of sudden infant death syndrome. Extensions to confounding, selection bias and more complex data structures are outlined.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS291 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

    Maternal mental health and memory (re)consolidation following a traumatic childbirth

    Get PDF
    Objectives: The overall aim of this thesis was to contribute to the development of clinical interventions to prevent or reduce maternal symptoms of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD). To do so, it relied on the literature on memory (re)consolidation, which corresponds to a set of processes potentially involved in the development and maintenance of CB-PTSD. The ambition of this thesis was to translate the research on memory (re)consolidation, mainly based on laboratory studies, into applied clinical proposals. Several avenues were explored: 1. Identifying factors that may modulate the consolidation of the traumatic birth memory (TBM) such as prenatal insomnia symptoms (Study 1), administration of nitrous oxide gas (N2O) or morphine during childbirth (Study 2), and CB-PTSD symptoms; and 2. Testing the effectiveness of brief visuospatial task-based interventions, which are assumed to interfere with the (re)consolidation of the TBM, in preventing (Study 3) or reducing (Study 4) CB-PTSD symptoms. Methods: Studies 1 (n = 1,610) and 2 (n = 2,070) were based on a prospective population-based cohort study (secondary data analyses), following women from pregnancy to eight weeks postpartum. Variables were measured via self-report questionnaires and patients' medical records. CB-PTSD was assessed at eight weeks postpartum. Study 3 (n = 144) is an ongoing multicentre, double-blind, randomised controlled trial (thus, results are not available yet). The intervention tested is delivered within six hours postpartum, and its effectiveness is primarily measured by a childbirth-related intrusive traumatic memories (ITMs) diary over the first week postpartum and an assessment of CB-PTSD symptoms at six weeks postpartum. Finally, Study 4 (n = 18) was a single-group pre-post study. The benefits of the intervention were measured with an ITMs diary over two weeks before and six weeks after the intervention, and CB-PTSD symptoms were measured with a self-report questionnaire, five days before and one month after the intervention. Results: In Study 1, prenatal insomnia symptoms were associated with CB-PTSD symptom severity, and this relationship was fully mediated by a negative subjective birth experience, as well as by postnatal insomnia symptoms. In Study 2, N2O administration during childbirth predicted less severe CB-PTSD symptoms. This was marginally the case with morphine. However, both analgesics predicted more CB-PTSD symptoms when combined with very severe pain during childbirth. Finally, participants in Study 4 reported a large reduction in their number of ITMs, and it persisted for up to six weeks post-intervention. Their CB-PTSD symptoms were also greatly reduced. Clinical implications: The results of this thesis suggest a number of avenues for preventing or reducing CB-PTSD symptoms through brief, simple, cost-effective, and innovative interventions. These could potentially be implemented throughout the perinatal period and notably pave the way for pharmacological (Study 2) or psychological (Studies 1 and 3) strategies for CB-PTSD prevention, for which there is currently no evidence-based intervention

    Evaluating in the Real-World Educational Intervention to Improve Interference Control in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Get PDF
    Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present deficiencies in interference control processes. The main aim of this pilot study was to analyze the efficacy of an educational intervention designed to optimize the interference control of eight ASD children, attending to their ASD severity level. A mixed-methods approach grounded in systematic observation and nomothetic/follow-up/multidimensional observational designs was used. An observation instrument was developed to code data, which were grouped according to the ASD severity level (Group 1, requires support; Group 2, requires substantial support) and were analyzed using a lag sequential analysis. The results show that, although both groups progressed during the intervention and could have continued to improve, each group evolved differently. Group 1 performed relatively well from the onset and increased and developed their interference control strategies throughout the intervention, while Group 2, despite also acquiring new interference control strategies, took more time to show improvements. One month after the intervention ended, both groups were unable to consolidate the strategies learned. A mixed-methods approach allowed for real interference control deficits in ASD children to be captured in a natural context. To conclude, it would be necessary to lengthen this intervention and adapt it to the needs of each group

    A comparative approach to social learning from the bottom up

    Get PDF
    The aim of this thesis is to examine the cognitive processes of social learning from the bottom up. In the field of comparative psychology, an overemphasis on understanding complex cognitive processes in nonhuman animals (e.g. empathy, imitation), may be detrimental to the study of simpler mechanisms. In this thesis, I report five studies of simple cognitive processes related to social learning. A series of experiments with human children and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus sp.), examined action imitation and identified a possible role for associative learning in the development of this ability. An analysis of observational data from captive capuchins explored a number of lesser-studied social learning phenomena, including behavioural synchrony, the neighbour effect, and group-size effects. The results of this study emphasise the importance of exploring behaviour at a number of levels to appreciate the dynamic nature of social influence. Two final experiments examined social contagion in capuchin monkeys, and highlight the importance of describing the relationship between behaviour and emotion to properly understand more complex social cognition. Together, these studies demonstrate how approaching human and nonhuman behaviour from the bottom up, as well as from the top down, can contribute to a better comparative science of social learning
    corecore