The neural basis of early action perception

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to reason about other's behavior is a pervasive aspect of mature and developing cognition. In past work, I have significantly contributed to the field by demonstrating that infants possess a rich understanding of others' goals and intentions, and I have identified some of the factors and experiences, such as infants' developing action abilities, that account for developmental change in this domain. My long-term career goal is to provide a precise, mechanistic account of changes in infants and children's understanding of others' behavior. However, progress toward this objective relies on the development of methods to assess the neurocognitive processes underlying action perception. The activities proposed in this career enhancement award represent the first step toward systematically investigating the neural basis of action perception, using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. The career enhancement plan involves two primary components. During the training phase I will receive mentorship from two leading experts in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, and gain hands-on experience in the acquisition, processing and analysis of infant ERP data. During the research phase, I will conduct a pilot study to investigate the feasibility of using ERP methods to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying action perception in typically developing infants. The findings from this work will provide important information regarding the developmental mechanisms underlying early action perception and understanding. Critically, the proposed studies will advance scientific knowledge by creating a novel method for assessing infants' action perception, and other aspects of social cognition, and by translating concepts from developmental psychology to neuroscience and vice versa. In addition, these results of the proposed work may be particularly relevant to the diagnosis and remediation of autism, a developmental disorder that is characterized by deficits in reasoning about other people's behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research seeks to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying infants' perception and understanding of goal-directed action. This work will provide important information regarding the processes involved in typical cognitive and social development, information that can then be used in the diagnosis and remediation of developmental disorders, such as autism.