Tactile localization promotes infant self-recognition in the mirror-mark test.

Mirror self-recognition has been hailed by many as a milestone in the acquisition of self-awareness with respect to phylogenesis and human ontogenesis. Yet there has been considerable controversy over the extent to which species other than humans and their closest primate relatives are capable of mirror self-recognition, and to the mechanisms that give rise to this ability. One influential view is that mirror self-recognition in humans and their closest primate relatives is a cognitive advance that is a product of primate evolution, stemming from more recently evolved neural structures and networks that develop through experience-independent mechanisms during ontogenesis.

Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body.

This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locations from 4 to 8 months of age (N = 11), comparing their ability to reach to the body to infants in a control group who did not receive stimulation (N = 10). Infants who received stimulation were more likely to successfully reach targets on the body than controls by 7 months of age.

Young Children's Interactions with Objects: Play as Practice and Practice as Play.

Objects permeate human culture and saturate the imagination. This duality offers both opportunity and challenge. Here we ask how young human children learn to exploit the immense potential afforded by objects that can exist simultaneously in both physical and imaginary realms.

Missing in action: Tool use is action based.

In this commentary on Osiurak and Reynaud's target article, we argue that action is largely missing in their account of the ascendance of human technological culture. We propose that an action-based developmental account can help to bridge the cognitive-sociocultural divide in explanations of the discovery, production, and cultural transmission of human tool use.

The Human Face Becomes Mapped as a Sensorimotor Reaching Space During the First Year.

Although recent behavioral and neural research indicates that infants represent the body's structure, how they engage self-representations for action is little understood. This study addressed how the human face becomes a reaching space. Infants (N = 24; 2-11 months) were tested longitudinally approximately every 3 weeks on their ability to reach to a vibrating target placed at different locations on the face.

Reaching to the Self: The Development of Infants' Ability to Localize Targets on the Body.

This study focused on the development of infants' sensorimotor knowledge about the layout of their bodies. Little is known about the development of the body as a reaching space, despite the importance of this skill for many self-directed adaptive behaviors, such as removing foreign stimuli from the skin or scratching an itch. A new method was developed in which vibrating targets were placed on the heads and arms of 7- to 21-month-old infants ( = 78) to test reaching localization of targets.

An Eye-Tracking Method for Directly Assessing Children's Visual-Motor Integration.

Background: Visual-motor integration is an integral component of many adaptive behaviors and has been linked to school readiness. In young school-age children, visual-motor integration is typically assessed with the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (Beery VMI), a standardized instrument that measures children's ability to copy 2-dimensional forms. The Beery VMI is scored according to children's final written product, but does not directly measure the process of visual-motor integration that underlies children's form copying.

Development of Infant Reaching Strategies to Tactile Targets on the Face.

Infant development of reaching to tactile targets on the skin has been studied little, despite its daily use during adaptive behaviors such as removing foreign stimuli or scratching an itch. We longitudinally examined the development of infant reaching strategies (from just under 2 to 11 months) approximately every other week with a vibrotactile stimulus applied to eight different locations on the face (left/right/center temple, left/right ear, left/right mouth corners, and chin). Successful reaching for the stimulus uses tactile input and proprioception to localize the target and move the hand to it.

The Development of Object Fitting: The Dynamics of Spatial Coordination.

Fitting objects into apertures is an adaptive skill that is incorporated into the design of many tools. We match or align shapes with openings when we insert keys into locks, when we put lids atop containers, or when we align a screwdriver with the groove of a screw. Traditionally, the development of object fitting has focused on children's abilities to successfully complete shape sorter tasks (e.

How beginning handwriting is influenced by letter knowledge: Visual-motor coordination during children's form copying.

Even with recent technological advances, handwriting remains the developmental foundation from which communication via written language unfolds. Despite the importance of handwriting to academic success, previous research with beginning school-age children has only indirectly measured the processes of handwriting using post hoc assessments of legibility and accuracy. We adapted new head-mounted eye-tracking methods to directly measure visual-motor coordination of preschool and early elementary school children (N = 40) as they copied familiar (English letters) and unfamiliar (Cyrillic symbols) letter-like forms in real time.

Which limb is it? Responses to vibrotactile stimulation in early infancy.

This study focuses on how the body schema develops during the first months of life, by investigating infants' motor responses to localized vibrotactile stimulation on their limbs. Vibrotactile stimulation was provided by small buzzers that were attached to the infants' four limbs one at a time. Four age groups were compared cross-sectionally (3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-month-olds).

Fitting handled objects into apertures by 17- to 36-month-old children: The dynamics of spatial coordination.

Handled artifacts are ubiquitous in human technology, but how young children engage in spatially coordinated behaviors with these artifacts is not well understood. To address this issue, children (N = 30) from 17-36 months were studied with motion tracking technology as they fit the distal segment of a handled artifact into a slot. The handle was orthogonal to the distal segment.

New Insights into the Development of Human Tool Use.

If tool use requires higher-level cognitive abilities, how is it that many animals show the capacity to use tools? New research on the development of human tool use offers a way to resolve this paradox. The research suggests that there is a developmental synergy between affordance detection and motor learning: As juveniles continually explore affordances entailed by object-surface combinations in real time, they tune the actions that will be incorporated into tool use over developmental time. We illustrate these ideas with research on how object banging in infancy serves as the motor substrate for later developing percussive tool use.

Culture Influences Action Understanding in Infancy: Prediction of Actions Performed With Chopsticks and Spoons in Chinese and Swedish Infants.

The cultural specificity of action prediction was assessed in 8-month-old Chinese and Swedish infants. Infants were presented with an actor eating with a spoon or chopsticks. Predictive goal-directed gaze shifts were examined using eye tracking.

Development of early handwriting: Visual-motor control during letter copying.

Despite the importance of handwriting for school readiness and early academic progress, prior research on the development of handwriting has focused primarily on the product rather than the process by which young children write letters. In contrast, in the present work, early handwriting is viewed as involving a suite of perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities, which must work in unison if children are to write letters efficiently. To study such coordination, head-mounted eye-tracking technology was used to investigate the process of visual-motor coordination while kindergarten children (N = 23) and adults (N = 11) copied individual letters and strings of letters that differed in terms of their phonemic properties.

Building Tool Use From Object Manipulation: A Perception-Action Perspective.

Tools are a universal feature of human culture. While most past research on tool use has focused on its cognitive underpinnings, in the present article we adopt a perception-action approach to understand how tool use emerges in early development. In this context, we review our work on infant object banging and how it may serve as a motor substrate for percussive tool use.

Manual action, fitting, and spatial planning: relating objects by young children.

This study uses motion tracking technology to provide a new way of addressing the development of the ability to prospectively orient objects with respect to one another. A group of toddlers between 16 and 33 months of age (N=30) were studied in an object fitting task while they wore reflective markers on their hands to track spatial adjustments in three dimensions. Manual displacements of the handheld object were separated into translations and rotations.

Tool Using.

Research on the development of tool use in children has often emphasized the cognitive bases of this achievement, focusing on the choice of an artifact, but has largely neglected its motor foundations. However, research across diverse fields, from evolutionary anthropology to cognitive neuroscience, converges on the idea that the actions that embody tool use are also critical for understanding its ontogenesis and phylogenesis. In this article, we highlight findings across these fields to show how a deeper examination of the act of tool using can inform developmental accounts and illuminate what makes human tool use unique.