ERIC Number: EJ965179
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
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Available Date: N/A
The Role of Motor Experience in Understanding Action Function: The Case of the Precision Grasp
Loucks, Jeff; Sommerville, Jessica A.
Child Development, v83 n3 p801-809 May-Jun 2012
Recent evidence suggests adults and infants selectively attend to features of action, such as how a hand contacts an object. The current research investigated whether this bias stems from infants' processing of the functional consequences of grasps: understanding that different grasps afford different future actions. A habituation paradigm assessed 10-month-old infants' (N = 62) understanding of the functional consequences of precision and whole-hand grasps in others' actions, and infants' own precision grasping abilities were also assessed. The results indicate infants understood the functional consequences of another's grasp only if they could perform precision grasps themselves. These results highlight a previously unknown aspect of early action understanding, and deepen our understanding of the relation between motor experience and cognition.
Descriptors: Role, Psychomotor Skills, Infants, Visual Perception, Dimensional Preference, Cognitive Processes, Habituation, Schemata (Cognition), Attention Control
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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