Perceptual and motor development

人类在他们的社会环境中行动并与之互动。因此，不仅要了解他人的行动、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在一起，对于我们的社交来说至关重要。婴儿比人们想象的更具互动性。早在他们会说话之前，他们就已经与周围的环境进行了激烈的交流；而且似乎婴儿对学习他人的行为、他们自己的行为以及他们的行为的结果特别感兴趣。在他们生命的第一年，他们在观察他人的同时学习行动，他们自己的行动会影响他们对他人所做的事情的兴趣。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。拟议的研究计划将侧重于这种关系。特别是，它将考察婴儿的知觉和运动发育如何影响他们如何执行自己的动作，以及他们如何学习理解他人的动作。动作对人类来说是特别的，最重要的是，婴儿对生物伴侣感兴趣。这项研究计划将考察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什么有什么关系？当婴儿开始自主活动时，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普遍的能力之间的关系。使用眼球跟踪和视频技术将能够研究动作理解、运动发育和身体知识的特征是如何与婴儿的认知发展联系起来的。

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.