6-Month-Old Infants' Sensitivity to Contingency in a Variant of the Mobile Paradigm With Proximal Stimulation Studied at Fine Temporal Resolution in the Laboratory.

Infants' ability to monitor "sensorimotor contingencies," i.e., the sensory effects of their own actions, is an important mechanism underlying learning.

Development of body knowledge as measured by arm differentiation in infants: From global to local?

The ability to sense and use the body parts in an organized and differentiated manner is a precursor of body knowledge in infancy. To acquire this ability, the infant's brain might explore the perceptual consequences of its bodily actions. Undifferentiated body movements would gradually be replaced by more precise actions.

Spontaneous body movements in spatial cognition.

People often perform spontaneous body movements during spatial tasks such as giving complex directions or orienting themselves on maps. How are these spontaneous gestures related to spatial problem-solving? We measured spontaneous movements during a perspective-taking task inspired by map reading. Analyzing the motion data to isolate rotation and translation components of motion in specific geometric relation to the task, we found out that most participants executed spontaneous miniature rotations of the head that were significantly related to the main task parameter.