Collaborative Research: Action, Learning, and Social Cognition

理解他人目标和意图的能力对社交能力至关重要。这其中的一个关键组成部分是解释其他人行为的原因。婴儿似乎能够在生命早期观察他人的行动来确定他人的目标，这种对他人目标的敏感性与婴儿自身执行基于目标的行动的能力的发展有关。这个项目的目的是研究支持婴儿对自己和他人基于目标的行动的新出现的敏感性的神经和认知系统。这项工作将为神经认知发展如何支持早期社会认知提供新的线索。这项拟议的研究将记录脑电(EEG)，这是一种记录大脑电活动的技术，而8至10个月大的婴儿在与他人进行联合动作时，以及当他们观察他人动作时，对物体进行动作。这项研究的第一个目标是描述婴儿学习参与新动作和社会合作时所涉及的神经过程。第二个目标是验证这样的预测，即这些神经过程也支持婴儿对他人目标导向行为的理解。为了解决这些问题，这项研究将评估婴儿行为和观察他人行为时的神经活动网络，并评估这些神经活动模式是否可以预测婴儿何时能够对他人目标导向的行为做出适当反应。除了解决重点研究问题外，拟议的研究还将产生分析婴儿神经和认知发展的新方法，这些对典型发育婴儿的研究结果可能有助于揭示影响社会认知和社会行为的发育障碍。该项目将为学生和博士后研究人员提供独特的多学科培训机会。

The ability to understand other people's goals and intentions is critical for social competence. A key component of this is interpreting the reasons for others' actions. Infants appear to be able to determine others' goals based on observing others' actions early in life, and this sensitivity to others' goals is associated with developments in infants' own ability to perform goal-based actions. The purpose of this project is to investigate the neural and cognitive systems that support infants' emerging sensitivity to goal-based actions in themselves and others. This work will shed new light on how neurocognitive development supports early social cognition. The proposed studies will record electroencephalogram (EEG), a technique for recording the brain's electrical activity, while 8- to 10-month-old infants perform actions on objects, when they perform joint actions with others, and when they observe others' actions. A first goal of the research is to characterize the neural processes that are involved when infants learn to engage in new actions and social collaborations. A second goal is to test the prediction that these neural processes also support infants' understanding of others' goal-directed actions. To address these issues, the research will evaluate networks of neural activity as infants act and observe others' actions, and will assess whether these patterns of neural activity predict when infants are able to respond appropriately to others' goal-directed actions. Beyond addressing the focal research questions, the proposed studies will generate new approaches to analyzing infant neural and cognitive development, and the findings of these studies with typically-developing infants may help to shed light on developmental disorders that affect social cognition and social behavior. The project will provide unique multidisciplinary training opportunities for students and postdoctoral researchers.