Event overview
Goldsmiths Psychology Department Seminar Series
Abstract
From early on, infants explore the world around them with great interest. They watch their own hands as they move through their visual field, pay close attention to the people around them, and – when they grow older – take pleasure in interacting and cooperating with adults in a playful manner. But how do infants learn about their own bodies? How do they develop the ability to understand actions they observe? And which mechanisms play a role in toddlers’ developing ability to act jointly with others?
In this talk, I will present a series of behavioral and neurophysiological experiments that examine how infants build models of themselves and others allowing them to generate predictions about own and others’ actions. In particular, I will discuss how active action experience and observational experience provide infants with the necessary information to learn about themselves and others.
On the one hand, infants’ own actions and the perception of their sensory consequences are the most important source of early self-awareness. Moreover, infants’ action experience contributes to their understanding of these actions in others. On the other hand, infants also come to an understanding of others’ actions, as they pick up the statistical regularities in behaviours that they observe repeatedly. Finally, I will describe how – based on active action experience and observational experience – infants gradually develop more complex social-cognitive capabilities.
Biography
Dr. Sabine Hunnius is director of the Baby Research Center at Radboud University, Nijmegen (Donders Center for Cognition). She studied Psychology in Berlin, Germany, and did her PhD at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her earlier research centered around visual perception in babies and interaction between mothers and babies. Her current research focuses mainly on early social-cognitive development. For example, she is looking at how babies learn to understand the actions and intentions of other people and when they start to do this.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Jan 2018 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm |
Accessibility
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