Action prediction during real-time social interactions in infancy

Monroy, Claire; Chen, Chi-hsin; Houston, Derek

Abstract

Developmental theory considers action prediction as one of several processes involved in determining how infants come to perceive and understand social events (Gredebäck & Daum, 2015). Action prediction is observed from early in life and is considered an important social-cognitive skill. However, knowledge about infant action prediction is limited
to evidence from screen-based eye-tracking tasks. Little is known about action prediction in real-life action contexts. Our aim in the current study was to provide new evidence on whether and how infants anticipate actions in free-flowing parent-child interaction. Using dual head-mounted eyetracking, we analyzed infants’ visual anticipations of their parents’ reaching actions while they played with objects together. Findings reveal that infants anticipate their parents’ actions at a rate higher than would be expected by chance.

Citation

Monroy, C., Chen, C., & Houston, D. (2019). Action prediction during real-time social interactions in infancy.

• Conference Name: 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
• Conference Location: Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
• Start Date: Jul 24, 2019
• End Date: Jul 27, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 8, 2024
• Pages: 836-842
• Keywords: dual head-mounted eye-tracking; action prediction; parent-child interaction; social-cognitive development
• Publisher URL: https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2019/