Perceptual and motor development

人类在其社会环境中活动并与之互动。 因此，不仅要了解其他人的行动、目标和愿望，而且要能够执行自己的行动、实现目标和表达愿望，这一点特别重要。 理解他人的行为，并知道这些行为如何与我们自己的行为联系起来，这对我们的社交互动至关重要。 婴儿的互动性比人们想象的要强。 他们在会说话之前就已经与周围的环境进行了激烈的交流;婴儿似乎对学习行为特别感兴趣--他人的、他们自己的以及行为的结果。 在他们生命的第一年，他们在观察他人的同时学习行为，他们自己的行为会影响他们对他人行为的兴趣。 理解这种双向关系是更深入地理解行动、目标和沟通的关键。 该研究计划将重点关注这种关系。 特别是，它将着眼于婴儿的知觉和运动发展如何影响他们如何执行自己的行动，以及他们如何学习理解别人的行动。 行动对人类来说是特殊的，最重要的是，婴儿对生物学伴侣感兴趣。 这项研究计划将着眼于婴儿对生物运动的知识，如抓取，爬行和行走。 这些知识与他们自己能够做的事情有什么关系？ 当婴儿开始自己移动时，他们会发现周围环境的新可能性和新特征。 研究将集中在新的运动技能与更一般的能力之间的关系。 眼动追踪和视频技术的使用将使研究行动理解，运动发展和身体知识的特征如何与婴儿的认知发展联系起来。

Human beings act in and interact with their social environment. Accordingly, it is of special importance not only to understand other individuals' actions, goals, and desires, but also to be able to perform one's own actions, to achieve goals, and to express desires. Understanding other people's actions and knowing how those actions can be linked to our own actions is crucial to our social interaction. Infants are more interactive than one might think. They have intense exchanges with their environment long before they can ever talk; and it seems that infants are especially interested in learning about actions - others', their own and the outcomes of them. In their first year of life, they learn about actions while watching others and their own actions affect how interested they are in those made by others. Understanding this two-way relationship is a key to more advanced understanding of actions, goals and communication. The proposed research program will focus on this relationship. Especially, it will look at how infants' perceptual and motor development affects how they perform their own actions and how they learn to understand the actions others make. Actions are something special for humans and, above all, infants are interested in biological partners. This research program will look at infants' knowledge about biological movements, like grasping, crawling, and walking. How is this knowledge related to what they are able to do on their own? When infants start to move on their own, they discover new possibilities and new features of their surroundings. Research will concentrate on the relationship of new motor skills to more general capacities. Use of eye-tracking and video technology will enable research of how features of action understanding, motor development, and body knowledge are linked to infants' cognitive development.