Infants parse dynamic action

Speaking Your Mind: Language and Narrative in Young Children's Theory of Mind Development

Research consistently finds that language and theory of mind are interrelated. The content and qualities of language that specifically predict theory of mind remain under investigation and the question of why language might impact theory of mind development is open. In this chapter we analyze and highlight current findings and theory addressing theory of mind and language. The principal focus is upon typically developing children between ages 2 and 5, a period characterized by extensive development in language and social understanding. We propose that the study of young children's narrative development can inform how and why language and theory of mind are connected. False belief understanding and narrative comprehension share many similarities and this association provides a promising avenue for future work.

Meaningful Memory? Eighteen-Month-Olds Only Remember Cartoons With a Meaningful Storyline

In two studies we investigated the importance of a storyline for remembering cartoons across a delay of 2 weeks in 18-month-old infants by means of the visual paired-comparison (VPC) paradigm. In Study 1 seventy-one 18-month-olds were tested using similar cartoons as in a recent study from our lab while varying the richness of the storyline information. In a VPC task half of the infants watched uncompromised versions of the cartoons used in the recent study (Storyline Condition), whereas the other half watched Pixelized versions of the cartoons (number of pixels reduced by 98% covering up the narrative, but leaving perceptual details, e.g., colors, movements, the same, and Pixelized Condition). Two weeks later they were presented with the familiar cartoon and a novel cartoon from the same version (Storyline or Pixelized) simultaneously, while being eye-tracked. Results showed that only the infants in the Storyline Condition remembered the target cartoon, thus suggesting that the storyline is important for memory. However, an alternative interpretation of the results could be that what made the infants in the Storyline Condition remember the target cartoon was not the storyline, but the static conceptual information of the objects and agents present in the cartoon (which was not visible in the Pixelized version). To test this possibility, a control study was created. In Study 2 thirty-six infants were therefore presented with a version of the cartoon in which we broke down the temporal presentation into 1 s segments and presented these out of order. This was done to preserve the static conceptual information (e.g., objects and agents) while still disturbing the storyline. Results showed that the infants in this condition still did not remember the target cartoon, suggesting that the meaningfulness of the storyline - and not only static conceptual information - is important for later memory.

The relationship between temperament style and understanding of human goal-directed action in infants

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between temperament style and understanding of goal-directed action in 10-11-month-old infants. Infant social understanding was assessed using a looking-time measure similar to Woodward (1998). This method yielded two measures of infant social understanding; 'decrement of attention' (a measure of infant attention during habituation) and 'novelty preference' (an index of infants' understanding of goal-directed behavior). Temperament style was provided by online parent report (IBQ; Rothbart, 1981). Infant shy/fearful temperament predicted decrement of attention scores. Novelty preference was also marginally related to shy temperament, but more strongly associated with low intensity pleasure, specifically enjoyment of physical contact with caregivers. Moreover, shy temperament continued to predict infant social understanding even when controlling for the effect of non-social intelligence (ASQ; Squires, et al., 2009). In our study, as in research with preschool-aged children (Wellman et al., 2011; Mink et al., 2014), shy, reticent temperament style is associated with social information processing, providing further evidence for continuity in individual differences in social cognition in early childhood.

The Rationality of (Over)imitation

Imitation is a powerful and ubiquitous social learning strategy, fundamental for the development of individual skills and cultural traditions. Recent research on the cognitive foundations and development of imitation, though, presents a surprising picture: Although even infants imitate in selective, efficient, and rational ways, children and adults engage in overimitation. Rather than imitating selectively and efficiently, they sometimes faithfully reproduce causally irrelevant actions as much as relevant ones. In this article, we suggest a new perspective on this phenomenon by integrating established findings on children’s more general capacities for rational action parsing with newer findings on overimitation. We suggest that overimitation is a consequence of children’s growing capacities to understand causal and social constraints in relation to goals and that it rests on the human capacity to represent observed actions simultaneously on different levels of goal hierarchies.

The choice is yours: Infants' expectations about an agent's future behavior based on taking and receiving actions

Our social world is rich with information about other people's choices, which subsequently inform our inferences about their future behavior. For individuals socialized within the American cultural context, which places a high value on autonomy and independence, outcomes that are the result of an agent's own choices may hold more predictive value than similar outcomes that are the result of another person's choices. Across two experiments we test the ontogeny of this phenomenon; that is, whether infants are sensitive to the causal history associated with an agent's acquisition of an object. We demonstrate that on average, 12.5-month-old American infants view taking actions as a better indication of an agent's future behavior than are receiving actions. Furthermore, there were significant individual differences in the extent to which infants perceived object receipt to be indicative of future behavior. Specifically, the less autonomous infants were perceived to be (by their parents), socialized to be, and behaved, the more they viewed object receipt as indicative of future behavior. The results are discussed in terms of the role of individual and cultural experience in early understanding of intentional action. (PsycINFO Database Record

Constraints on Statistical Learning Across Species

Both human and nonhuman organisms are sensitive to statistical regularities in sensory inputs that support functions including communication, visual processing, and sequence learning. One of the issues faced by comparative research in this field is the lack of a comprehensive theory to explain the relevance of statistical learning across distinct ecological niches. In the current review we interpret cross-species research on statistical learning based on the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that characterize the human and nonhuman models under investigation. Considering statistical learning as an essential part of the cognitive architecture of an animal will help to uncover the potential ecological functions of this powerful learning process.

Event perception: Translations and applications

Event segmentation is the parsing of ongoing activity into meaningful events. Segmenting in a normative fashion-identifying event boundaries similar to others' boundaries-is associated with better memory for and better performance of naturalistic actions. Given this, a reasonable hypothesis is that interventions that improve memory and attention for everyday events could lead to improvement in domains that are important for independent living, particularly in older populations. Event segmentation and memory measures may also be effective diagnostic tools for estimating people's ability to carry out tasks of daily living. Such measures preserve the rich, naturalistic character of everyday activity, but are easy to quantify in a laboratory or clinical setting. Therefore, event segmentation and memory measures may be a useful proxy for clinicians to assess everyday functioning in patient populations and an appropriate target for interventions aimed at improving everyday memory and tasks of daily living.

Statistical learning in social action contexts

Sensitivity to the regularities and structure contained within sequential, goal-directed actions is an important building block for generating expectations about the actions we observe. Until now, research on statistical learning for actions has solely focused on individual action sequences, but many actions in daily life involve multiple actors in various interaction contexts. The current study is the first to investigate the role of statistical learning in tracking regularities between actions performed by different actors, and whether the social context characterizing their interaction influences learning. That is, are observers more likely to track regularities across actors if they are perceived as acting jointly as opposed to in parallel? We tested adults and toddlers to explore whether social context guides statistical learning and-if so-whether it does so from early in development. In a between-subjects eye-tracking experiment, participants were primed with a social context cue between two actors who either shared a goal of playing together ('Joint' condition) or stated the intention to act alone ('Parallel' condition). In subsequent videos, the actors performed sequential actions in which, for certain action pairs, the first actor's action reliably predicted the second actor's action. We analyzed predictive eye movements to upcoming actions as a measure of learning, and found that both adults and toddlers learned the statistical regularities across actors when their actions caused an effect. Further, adults with high statistical learning performance were sensitive to social context: those who observed actors with a shared goal were more likely to correctly predict upcoming actions. In contrast, there was no effect of social context in the toddler group, regardless of learning performance. These findings shed light on how adults and toddlers perceive statistical regularities across actors depending on the nature of the observed social situation and the resulting effects.

Trading Spaces: Carving up Events for Learning Language

Relational terms (e.g., verbs and prepositions) are the cornerstone of language development, bringing together two distinct fields: linguistic theory and infants’ event processing. To acquire relational terms such as run, walk, in, and on, infants must first perceive and conceptualize components of dynamic events such as containment—support, path—manner, source—goal, and figure—ground. Infants must then uncover how the particular language they are learning encodes these constructs. This review addresses the interaction of language learning with infants’ conceptualization of these nonlinguistic spatial event components. We present the thesis that infants start with language-general nonlinguistic constructs that are gradually refined and tuned to the requirements of their native language. In effect, infants are trading spaces, maintaining their sensitivity to some relational distinctions while dampening other distinctions, depending on how their native language expresses these constructs.

Event segmentation improves event memory up to one month later

When people observe everyday activity, they spontaneously parse it into discrete meaningful events. Individuals who segment activity in a more normative fashion show better subsequent memory for the events. If segmenting events effectively leads to better memory, does asking people to attend to segmentation improve subsequent memory? To answer this question, participants viewed movies of naturalistic activity with instructions to remember the activity for a later test, and in some conditions additionally pressed a button to segment the movies into meaningful events or performed a control condition that required button-pressing but not attending to segmentation. In 5 experiments, memory for the movies was assessed at intervals ranging from immediately following viewing to 1 month later. Performing the event segmentation task led to superior memory at delays ranging from 10 min to 1 month. Further, individual differences in segmentation ability predicted individual differences in memory performance for up to a month following encoding. This study provides the first evidence that manipulating event segmentation affects memory over long delays and that individual differences in event segmentation are related to differences in memory over long delays. These effects suggest that attending to how an activity breaks down into meaningful events contributes to memory formation. Instructing people to more effectively segment events may serve as a potential intervention to alleviate everyday memory complaints in aging and clinical populations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Social is special: A normative framework for teaching with and learning from evaluative feedback

Humans often attempt to influence one another's behavior using rewards and punishments. How does this work? Psychologists have often assumed that "evaluative feedback" influences behavior via standard learning mechanisms that learn from environmental contingencies. On this view, teaching with evaluative feedback involves leveraging learning systems designed to maximize an organism's positive outcomes. Yet, despite its parsimony, programs of research predicated on this assumption, such as ones in developmental psychology, animal behavior, and human-robot interaction, have had limited success. We offer an explanation by analyzing the logic of evaluative feedback and show that specialized learning mechanisms are uniquely favored in the case of evaluative feedback from a social partner. Specifically, evaluative feedback works best when it is treated as communicating information about the value of an action rather than as a form of reward to be maximized. This account suggests that human learning from evaluative feedback depends on inferences about communicative intent, goals and other mental states-much like learning from other sources, such as demonstration, observation and instruction. Because these abilities are especially developed in humans, the present account also explains why evaluative feedback is far more widespread in humans than non-human animals.

Bound to remember: Infants show superior memory for objects presented at event boundaries

Following Event Segmentation Theory (EST) adult memory is enhanced at event boundaries (EB). The present study set out to explore this in infancy. Sixty-eight 21-month-olds watched a cartoon with one of two objects (counterbalanced) inserted for 3s either at EB or between EB. Ten minutes later they watched both objects (familiar and novel) in a 10s Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) test while being eye-tracked. Furthermore, they were asked to point to the previous object. Based on EST, we hypothesized that objects inserted at EB would be processed more fully, resulting in improved memory compared to objects inserted between EB. Only infants with objects at EB exhibited memory evidenced by a transient familiarity preference for the first 3s of the test. Only 18 infants completed the pointing test, but all infants presented with objects at EB (10/10) pointed to the correct (familiar) object, which was not the case for the infants presented with objects between EB (5/8).

Toddlers' action prediction: Statistical learning of continuous action sequences

The current eye-tracking study investigated whether toddlers use statistical information to make anticipatory eye movements while observing continuous action sequences. In two conditions, 19-month-old participants watched either a person performing an action sequence (Agent condition) or a self-propelled visual event sequence (Ghost condition). Both sequences featured a statistical structure in which certain action pairs occurred with deterministic transitional probabilities. Toddlers learned the transitional probabilities between the action steps of the deterministic action pairs and made predictive fixations to the location of the next action in the Agent condition but not in the Ghost condition. These findings suggest that young toddlers gain unique information from the statistical structure contained within action sequences and are able to successfully predict upcoming action steps based on this acquired knowledge. Furthermore, predictive gaze behavior was correlated with reproduction of sequential actions following exposure to statistical regularities. This study extends previous developmental work by showing that statistical learning can guide the emergence of anticipatory eye movements during observation of continuous action sequences.

Children's Representation and Imitation of Events: How Goal Organization Influences 3-Year-Old Children's Memory for Action Sequences

Children's imitation of adults plays a prominent role in human cognitive development. However, few studies have investigated how children represent the complex structure of observed actions which underlies their imitation. We integrate theories of action segmentation, memory, and imitation to investigate whether children's event representation is organized according to veridical serial order or a higher level goal structure. Children were randomly assigned to learn novel event sequences either through interactive hands-on experience (Study 1) or via storybook (Study 2). Results demonstrate that children's representation of observed actions is organized according to higher level goals, even at the cost of representing the veridical temporal ordering of the sequence. We argue that prioritizing goal structure enhances event memory, and that this mental organization is a key mechanism of social-cognitive development in real-world, dynamic environments. It supports cultural learning and imitation in ecologically valid settings when social agents are multitasking and not demonstrating one isolated goal at a time.

Prelinguistic foundations of verb learning: Infants discriminate and categorize dynamic human actions

Action categorization is necessary for human cognition and is foundational to learning verbs, which label categories of actions and events. In two studies using a nonlinguistic preferential looking paradigm, 10- to 12-month-old English-learning infants were tested on their ability to discriminate and categorize a dynamic human manner of motion (i.e., way in which a figure moves; e.g., marching). Study 1 results reveal that infants can discriminate a change in path and actor across instances of the same manner of motion. Study 2 results suggest that infants categorize the manner of motion for dynamic human events even under conditions in which other components of the event change, including the actor's path and the actor. Together, these two studies extend prior research on infant action categorization of animated motion events by providing evidence that infants can categorize dynamic human actions, a skill foundational to the learning of motion verbs.

Infants' observation of tool-use events over the first year of life

How infants observe a goal-directed instrumental action provides a unique window into their understanding of others' behavior. In this study, we investigated eye-gaze patterns while infants observed events in which an actor used a tool on an object. Comparisons among 4-, 7-, 10-, and 12-month-old infants and adults reveal changes in infants' looking patterns with age; following an initial face bias, infants' scan path eventually shows a dynamic integration of both the actor's face and the objects on which they act. This shift may mark a transition in infants' understanding of the critical components of tool-use events and their understanding of others' behavior.

EVENT SEGMENTATION

One way to understand something is to break it up into parts. New research indicates that segmenting ongoing activity into meaningful events is a core component of ongoing perception, with consequences for memory and learning. Behavioral and neuroimaging data suggest that event segmentation is automatic and that people spontaneously segment activity into hierarchically organized parts and sub-parts. This segmentation depends on the bottom-up processing of sensory features such as movement, and on the top-down processing of conceptual features such as actors' goals. How people segment activity affects what they remember later; as a result, those who identify appropriate event boundaries during perception tend to remember more and learn more proficiently.

Talk the Walk: Does Socio-Cognitive Resource Reallocation Facilitate the Development of Walking?

Walking is of interest to psychology, robotics, zoology, neuroscience and medicine. Human's ability to walk on two feet is considered to be one of the defining characteristics of hominoid evolution. Evolutionary science propses that it emerged in response to limited environmental resources; yet the processes supporting its emergence are not fully understood. Developmental psychology research suggests that walking elicits cognitive advancements. We postulate that the relationship between cognitive development and walking is a bi-directional one; and further suggest that the initiation of novel capacities, such as walking, is related to internal socio-cognitive resource reallocation. We shed light on these notions by exploring infants' cognitive and socio-communicative outputs prospectively from 6-18 months of age. Structured bi/tri weekly evaluations of symbolic and verbal development were employed in an urban cohort (N = 9) for 12 months, during the transition from crawling to walking. Results show links between preemptive cognitive changes in socio-communicative output, symbolic-cognitive tool-use processes, and the age of emergence of walking. Plots of use rates of lower symbolic play levels before and after emergence of new skills illustrate reductions in use of previously attained key behaviors prior to emergence of higher symbolic play, language and walking. Further, individual differences in age of walking initiation were strongly related to the degree of reductions in complexity of object-use (r = .832, p < .005), along with increases, counter to the general reduction trend, in skills that serve recruitment of external resources [socio-communication bids before speech (r = -.696, p < .01), and speech bids before walking; r = .729, p < .01)]. Integration of these proactive changes using a computational approach yielded an even stronger link, underscoring internal resource reallocation as a facilitator of walking initiation (r = .901, p<0.001). These preliminary data suggest that representational capacities, symbolic object use, language and social developments, form an integrated adaptable composite, which possibly enables proactive internal resource reallocation, designed to support the emergence of new developmental milestones, such as walking.

An Alternative to Mapping a Word onto a Concept in Language Acquisition: Pragmatic Frames

The classic mapping metaphor posits that children learn a word by mapping it onto a concept of an object or event. However, we believe that a mapping metaphor cannot account for word learning, because even though children focus attention on objects, they do not necessarily remember the connection between the word and the referent unless it is framed pragmatically, that is, within a task. Our theoretical paper proposes an alternative mechanism for word learning. Our main premise is that word learning occurs as children accomplish a goal in cooperation with a partner. We follow Bruner's (1983) idea and further specify pragmatic frames as the learning units that drive language acquisition and cognitive development. These units consist of a sequence of actions and verbal behaviors that are co-constructed with a partner to achieve a joint goal. We elaborate on this alternative, offer some initial parametrizations of the concept, and embed it in current language learning approaches.

Possible evolutionary and developmental mechanisms of mental time travel (and implications for autism)

Through an interdisciplinary perspective integrating behavior, neurobiology and evolution, we present a cognitive framework underpinning the development of 'time in mind' in animals (phylogeny) and humans (ontogeny). We distinguish between conscious processing of events immediately available (in the present) to those that are hypothetical (in the past or future). The former is present in animals and neonates, whereas the latter emerges later in phylogeny and ontogeny (around 4 years of age in humans) and is related to the development of episodic memory (expanded working memory, complex actions, social-cognitive abilities). We suggest that forms of temporal representation that rely upon current bodily sensation across time, space, and action (through embodied interoceptive and motor systems) may be critical causal factors for the evolution of mental time travel.

Occlusions at event boundaries during encoding have a negative effect on infant memory

The present study investigated the importance of Event Boundaries for 16- and 20-month-olds' (n=80) memory for cartoons. The infants watched one out of two cartoons with ellipses inserted covering the screen for 3s either at Event Boundaries or at Non-Boundaries. After a two-week delay both cartoons (one familiar and one novel) were presented simultaneously without ellipses while eye-tracking the infants. According to recent evidence a familiarity preference was expected. However, following Event Segmentation Theory ellipses at Event Boundaries were expected to cause greater disturbance of the encoding and hence a weaker memory trace evidenced by reduced familiarity preference, relative to ellipses at Non-Boundaries. The results suggest that overall this was the case, documenting the importance of Boundaries for infant memory. Furthermore, planned analyses revealed that whereas the same pattern was found when looking at the 20-month-old infants, no significant difference was found between the two conditions in the youngest age-group.

Action Interrupted: Processing of Movement and Breakpoints in Toddlers and Adults

From early in development, segmenting events unfolding in the world in meaningful ways renders input more manageable and facilitates interpretation and prediction. Yet, little is known about how children process action structure in events comprised of multiple coarse-grained actions. More importantly, little is known about the time-course of action processing in young children or about the specific features that recruit attention. This is particularly true when we consider action that pauses unexpectedly-as actions sometimes do-violating the expectation of a continuous unfolding of motion. We assessed visual preference to intact and disrupted actions embedded within a multi-action event in toddlers and adults. In one condition, pauses were inserted at intact action boundaries whereas in the other condition they disrupted action. Attention in both groups was recruited to the disrupted relative to intact events. Time-course analyses, however, revealed developmental differences in sensitivity to the movement features (e.g., motion, pauses, and transitions) of disrupted events.

Effects of penetrating traumatic brain injury on event segmentation and memory

Penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) is associated with deficits in cognitive tasks including comprehension and memory, and also with impairments in tasks of daily living. In naturalistic settings, one important component of cognitive task performance is event segmentation, the ability to parse the ongoing stream of behavior into meaningful units. Event segmentation ability is associated with memory performance and with action control, but is not well assessed by standard neuropsychological assessments or laboratory tasks. Here, we measured event segmentation and memory in a sample of 123 male military veterans aged 59-81 who had suffered a traumatic brain injury as young men, and 34 demographically similar controls. Participants watched movies of everyday activities and segmented them to identify fine-grained or coarse-grained events, and then completed tests of recognition memory for pictures from the movies and of memory for the temporal order of actions in the movies. Lesion location and volume were assessed with computed tomography (CT) imaging. Patients with traumatic brain injury were impaired on event segmentation. Those with larger lesions had larger impairments for fine segmentation and also impairments for both memory measures. Further, the degree of memory impairment was statistically mediated by the degree of event segmentation impairment. There was some evidence that lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) selectively impaired coarse segmentation; however, lesions outside of a priori regions of interest also were associated with impaired segmentation. One possibility is that the effect of vmPFC damage reflects the role of prefrontal event knowledge representations in ongoing comprehension. These results suggest that assessment of naturalistic event comprehension can be a valuable component of cognitive assessment in cases of traumatic brain injury, and that interventions aimed at event segmentation could be clinically helpful.

What makes a movement a gesture?

Theories of how adults interpret the actions of others have focused on the goals and intentions of actors engaged in object-directed actions. Recent research has challenged this assumption, and shown that movements are often interpreted as being for their own sake (Schachner & Carey, 2013). Here we postulate a third interpretation of movement-movement that represents action, but does not literally act on objects in the world. These movements are gestures. In this paper, we describe a framework for predicting when movements are likely to be seen as representations. In Study 1, adults described one of three scenes: (1) an actor moving objects, (2) an actor moving her hands in the presence of objects (but not touching them) or (3) an actor moving her hands in the absence of objects. Participants systematically described the movements as depicting an object-directed action when the actor moved objects, and favored describing the movements as depicting movement for its own sake when the actor produced the same movements in the absence of objects. However, participants favored describing the movements as representations when the actor produced the movements near, but not on, the objects. Study 2 explored two additional features-the form of an actor's hands and the presence of speech-like sounds-to test the effect of context on observers' classification of movement as representational. When movements are seen as representations, they have the power to influence communication, learning, and cognition in ways that movement for its own sake does not. By incorporating representational gesture into our framework for movement analysis, we take an important step towards developing a more cohesive understanding of action-interpretation.

Eighteen-month-olds' memory for short movies of simple stories

This study investigated twenty four 18-month-olds' memory for dynamic visual stimuli. During the first visit participants saw one of two brief movies (30 seconds) with a simple storyline displayed in four iterations. After 2 weeks, memory was tested in the visual paired comparison paradigm in which the familiar and the novel movie were contrasted simultaneously and displayed in two iterations for a total of 60 seconds. Eye-tracking revealed that participants fixated the familiar movie significantly more than the novel movie, thus indicating memory for the familiar movie. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis of the data revealed that individual differences in the looking-patterns for the first and second iteration of the movies were related to individual differences in productive vocabulary. We suggest that infants' vocabulary may be indicative of their ability to understand and remember the storyline of the movies, thereby affecting their subsequent memory.

Symbolic play and language development

Symbolic play and language are known to be highly interrelated, but the developmental process involved in this relationship is not clear. Three hypothetical paths were postulated to explore how play and language drive each other: (1) direct paths, whereby initiation of basic forms in symbolic action or babbling, will be directly related to all later emerging language and motor outputs; (2) an indirect interactive path, whereby basic forms in symbolic action will be associated with more complex forms in symbolic play, as well as with babbling, and babbling mediates the relationship between symbolic play and speech; and (3) a dual path, whereby basic forms in symbolic play will be associated with basic forms of language, and complex forms of symbolic play will be associated with complex forms of language. We micro-coded 288 symbolic vignettes gathered during a yearlong prospective bi-weekly examination (N=14; from 6 to 18 months of age). Results showed that the age of initiation of single-object symbolic play correlates strongly with the age of initiation of later-emerging symbolic and vocal outputs; its frequency at initiation is correlated with frequency at initiation of babbling, later-emerging speech, and multi-object play in initiation. Results support the notion that a single-object play relates to the development of other symbolic forms via a direct relationship and an indirect relationship, rather than a dual-path hypothesis.

Social cognition and psychopathology: a critical overview

The philosophical and interdisciplinary debate about the nature of social cognition, and the processes involved, has important implications for psychiatry. On one account, mindreading depends on making theoretical inferences about another person's mental states based on knowledge of folk psychology, the so-called "theory theory" (TT). On a different account, "simulation theory" (ST), mindreading depends on simulating the other's mental states within one's own mental or motor system. A third approach, "interaction theory" (IT), looks to embodied processes (involving movement, gesture, facial expression, vocal intonation, etc.) and the dynamics of intersubjective interactions (joint attention, joint action, and processes not confined to an individual system) in highly contextualized situations to explain social cognition, and disruptions of these processes in some psychopathological conditions. In this paper, we present a brief summary of these three theoretical frameworks (TT, ST, IT). We then focus on impaired social abilities in autism and schizophrenia from the perspective of the three approaches. We discuss the limitations of such approaches in the scientific studies of these and other pathologies, and we close with a short reflection on the future of the field. In this regard we argue that, to the extent that TT, ST and IT offer explanations that capture different (limited) aspects of social cognition, a pluralist approach might be best.

Causal inference and the hierarchical structure of experience

Children and adults make rich causal inferences about the physical and social world, even in novel situations where they cannot rely on prior knowledge of causal mechanisms. We propose that this capacity is supported in part by constraints provided by event structure--the cognitive organization of experience into discrete events that are hierarchically organized. These event-structured causal inferences are guided by a level-matching principle, with events conceptualized at one level of an event hierarchy causally matched to other events at that same level, and a boundary-blocking principle, with events causally matched to other events that are parts of the same superordinate event. These principles are used to constrain inferences about plausible causal candidates in unfamiliar situations, both in diagnosing causes (Experiment 1) and predicting effects (Experiment 2). The results could not be explained by construal level (Experiment 3) or similarity-matching (Experiment 4), and were robust across a variety of physical and social causal systems. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate a novel way in which noncausal information we extract from the environment can help to constrain inferences about causal structure.

Nonverbal synchrony of head- and body-movement in psychotherapy: different signals have different associations with outcome

Objective: The coordination of patient’s and therapist’s bodily movement – nonverbal synchrony – has been empirically shown to be associated with psychotherapy outcome. This finding was based on dynamic movement patterns of the whole body. The present paper is a new analysis of an existing dataset (Ramseyer and Tschacher, 2011), which extends previous findings by differentiating movements pertaining to head and upper-body regions.

Method: In a sample of 70 patients (37 female, 33 male) treated at an outpatient psychotherapy clinic, we quantified nonverbal synchrony with an automated objective video-analysis algorithm (motion energy analysis). Head- and body-synchrony was quantified during the initial 15 min of video-recorded therapy sessions. Micro-outcome was assessed with self-report post-session questionnaires provided by patients and their therapists. Macro-outcome was measured with questionnaires that quantified attainment of treatment goals and changes in experiencing and behavior at the end of therapy.

Results: The differentiation of head- and body-synchrony showed that these two facets of motor coordination were differentially associated with outcome. Head-synchrony predicted global outcome of therapy, while body-synchrony did not, and body-synchrony predicted session outcome, while head-synchrony did not.

Conclusion: The results pose an important amendment to previous findings, which showed that nonverbal synchrony embodied both outcome and interpersonal variables of psychotherapy dyads. The separation of head- and body-synchrony suggested that distinct mechanisms may operate in these two regions: Head-synchrony embodied phenomena with a long temporal extension (overall therapy success), while body-synchrony embodied phenomena of a more immediate nature (session-level success). More explorations with fine-grained analyses of synchronized phenomena in nonverbal behavior may shed additional light on the embodiment of psychotherapy process.

What are you doing? How active and observational experience shape infants' action understanding

From early in life, infants watch other people's actions. How do young infants come to make sense of actions they observe? Here, we review empirical findings on the development of action understanding in infancy. Based on this review, we argue that active action experience is crucial for infants' developing action understanding. When infants execute actions, they form associations between motor acts and the sensory consequences of these acts. When infants subsequently observe these actions in others, they can use their motor system to predict the outcome of the ongoing actions. Also, infants come to an understanding of others' actions through the repeated observation of actions and the effects associated with them. In their daily lives, infants have plenty of opportunities to form associations between observed events and learn about statistical regularities of others' behaviours. We argue that based on these two forms of experience-active action experience and observational experience-infants gradually develop more complex action understanding capabilities.

Infants segment continuous events using transitional probabilities

Throughout their 1st year, infants adeptly detect statistical structure in their environment. However, little is known about whether statistical learning is a primary mechanism for event segmentation. This study directly tests whether statistical learning alone is sufficient to segment continuous events. Twenty-eight 7- to 9-month-old infants viewed a sequence of continuous actions performed by a novel agent in which there were no transitional movements that could have constrained the possible upcoming actions. At test, infants distinguished statistically intact units from less predictable ones. The ability to segment events using statistical structure may help infants discover other cues to event boundaries, such as intentions, and carve up the world of continuous motion in meaningful ways.

Why Is Infant Language Learning Facilitated by Parental Responsiveness?

Parents’ responsiveness to infants’ exploratory and communicative behaviors predicts infant word learning during early periods of language development. We examine the processes that might explain why this association exists. We suggest that responsiveness supports infants’ growing pragmatic understanding that language is a tool that enables intentions to be socially shared. Additionally, several features of responsiveness—namely, its temporal contiguity, contingency, and multimodal and didactic content—facilitate infants’ mapping of words to their referents and, in turn, growth in vocabulary. We close by examining the generalizability of these processes to infants from diverse cultural communities.

How and where: theory-of-mind in the brain

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Neuroscience has the potential to address accounts of theory-of-mind acquisition.

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Review of the research on the neural basis of theory-of-mind in adults and children.

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Future research directions include microgenetic and training fMRI studies.

Theory of mind (ToM) is a core topic in both social neuroscience and developmental psychology, yet theory and data from each field have only minimally constrained thinking in the other. The two fields might be fruitfully integrated, however, if social neuroscientists sought evidence directly relevant to current accounts of ToM development: modularity, simulation, executive, and theory theory accounts. Here we extend the distinct predictions made by each theory to the neural level, describe neuroimaging evidence that in principle would be relevant to testing each account, and discuss such evidence where it exists. We propose that it would be mutually beneficial for both fields if ToM neuroimaging studies focused more on integrating developmental accounts of ToM acquisition with neuroimaging approaches, and suggest ways this might be achieved.