Neural body maps in human infants: Somatotopic responses to tactile stimulation in 7-month-olds

A large literature has examined somatotopic representations of the body in the adult brain, but little attention has been paid to the development of somatotopic neural organization in human infants. In the present study we examined whether the somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) elicited by brief tactile stimulation of infants' hands and feet shows a somatotopic response pattern at 7months postnatal age. The tactile stimuli elicited a prominent positive component in the SEP at central sites that peaked around 175ms after stimulus onset. Consistent with a somatotopic response pattern, the amplitude of the response to hand stimulation was greater at lateral central electrodes (C3 and C4) than at the midline central electrode (Cz). As expected, the opposite pattern was obtained to foot stimulation, with greater peak amplitude at Cz than at C3 and C4. These results provide evidence of somatotopy in human infants and suggest that the developing body map can be delineated using readily available methods such as EEG. These findings open up possibilities for further work investigating the organization and plasticity of infant body maps.

Imitation as a mechanism in cognitive development: a cross-cultural investigation of 4-year-old children's rule learning

Children learn about the social and physical world by observing other people's acts. This experiment tests both Chinese and American children's learning of a rule. For theoretical reasons we chose the rule of categorizing objects by the weight. Children, age 4 years, saw an adult heft four visually-identical objects and sort them into two bins based on an invisible property-the object's weight. Children who saw this categorization behavior were more likely to sort those objects by weight than were children who saw control actions using the same objects and the same bins. Crucially, children also generalized to a novel set of objects with no further demonstration, suggesting rule learning. We also report that high-fidelity imitation of the adult's "hefting" acts may give children crucial experience with the objects' weights, which could then be used to infer the more abstract rule. The connection of perception, action, and cognition was found in children from both cultures, which leads to broad implications for how the imitation of adults' acts functions as a lever in cognitive development.

Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: increasing girls' interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes

Despite having made significant inroads into many traditionally male-dominated fields (e.g., biology, chemistry), women continue to be underrepresented in computer science and engineering. We propose that students' stereotypes about the culture of these fields-including the kind of people, the work involved, and the values of the field-steer girls away from choosing to enter them. Computer science and engineering are stereotyped in modern American culture as male-oriented fields that involve social isolation, an intense focus on machinery, and inborn brilliance. These stereotypes are compatible with qualities that are typically more valued in men than women in American culture. As a result, when computer science and engineering stereotypes are salient, girls report less interest in these fields than their male peers. However, altering these stereotypes-by broadening the representation of the people who do this work, the work itself, and the environments in which it occurs-significantly increases girls' sense of belonging and interest in the field. Academic stereotypes thus serve as gatekeepers, driving girls away from certain fields and constraining their learning opportunities and career aspirations.

Connecting the dots from infancy to childhood: a longitudinal study connecting gaze following, language, and explicit theory of mind

This longitudinal study tested the same children at three time points: infancy (10.5 months of age), toddlerhood (2.5 years of age), and early childhood (4.5 years of age). At 10.5 months, infants were assessed experimentally with a gaze-following paradigm. At 2.5 years, children's language skills were measured using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. At 4.5 years, children's explicit theory of mind was assessed with a standard test battery. Analyses revealed that infants with higher gaze-following scores at 10.5 months produced significantly more mental-state words at 2.5 years and that children with more mental-state words at 2.5 years were more successful on the theory-of-mind battery at 4.5 years. These predictive longitudinal relationships remained significant after controlling for general language, maternal education, and nonsocial attention. The results illuminate the bridging role that language plays in connecting infants' social cognition to children's later understanding of others' mental states. The obtained specificity in the longitudinal relations informs theories concerning mechanisms of developmental change.

Designing Classrooms to Maximize Student Achievement

Improving student achievement is vital for our nation’s competitiveness. Scientific research shows how the physical classroom environment influences student achievement. Two findings are key: First, the building’s structural facilities profoundly influence learning. Inadequate lighting, noise, low air quality, and deficient heating in the classroom are significantly related to worse student achievement. Over half of U.S. schools have inadequate structural facilities, and students of color and lower income students are more likely to attend schools with inadequate structural facilities. Second, scientific studies reveal the unexpected importance of a classroom’s symbolic features, such as objects and wall décor, in influencing student learning and achievement in that environment. Symbols inform students whether they are valued learners and belong within the classroom, with far-reaching consequences for students’ educational choices and achievement. We outline policy implications of the scientific findings—noting relevant policy audiences—and specify critical features of classroom design that can improve student achievement, especially for the most vulnerable students.

Infant, Control Thyself: Infants' Integration of Multiple Social Cues to Regulate Their Imitative Behavior

This study investigated 15-month-old infants' (N = 150) ability to self-regulate based on observing a social interaction between two adults. Infants were bystanders to a social exchange in which an Experimenter performed actions on objects and an Emoter expressed anger, as if they were forbidden acts. Next, the Emoter became neutral and her visual access to the infant was experimentally manipulated. The Emoter either: (a) left the room, (b) turned her back, (c) faced the infant but looked down at a magazine, or (d) faced and looked toward the infant. Infants were then presented with the test objects. When the previously angry Emoter was facing them, infants were hesitant to imitate the demonstrated acts in comparison to the other conditions. We hypothesize that infants integrated the emotional and visual-perceptual cues to determine whether the Emoter would get angry at them, and then regulated their behavior accordingly. Temperament was related to infants' self-regulation -infants with higher impulsivity scores were more likely to perform the forbidden acts. Taken together, these findings provide insight into the roots of executive functions in late infancy.

Causal learning from probabilistic events in 24-month-olds: an action measure

How do young children learn about causal structure in an uncertain and variable world? We tested whether they can use observed probabilistic information to solve causal learning problems. In two experiments, 24-month-olds observed an adult produce a probabilistic pattern of causal evidence. The toddlers then were given an opportunity to design their own intervention. In Experiment 1, toddlers saw one object bring about an effect with a higher probability than a second object. In Experiment 2, the frequency of the effect was held constant, though its probability differed. After observing the probabilistic evidence, toddlers in both experiments chose to act on the object that was more likely to produce the effect. The results demonstrate that toddlers can learn about cause and effect without trial-and-error or linguistic instruction on the task, simply by observing the probabilistic patterns of evidence resulting from the imperfect actions of other social agents. Such observational causal learning from probabilistic displays supports human children's rapid cultural learning.

Of babies and birds: complex tool behaviours are not sufficient for the evolution of the ability to create a novel causal intervention

Humans are capable of simply observing a correlation between cause and effect, and then producing a novel behavioural pattern in order to recreate the same outcome. However, it is unclear how the ability to create such causal interventions evolved. Here, we show that while 24-month-old children can produce an effective, novel action after observing a correlation, tool-making New Caledonian crows cannot. These results suggest that complex tool behaviours are not sufficient for the evolution of this ability, and that causal interventions can be cognitively and evolutionarily disassociated from other types of causal understanding.

Neural mirroring mechanisms and imitation in human infants

Studying human infants will increase our understanding of the nature, origins and function of neural mirroring mechanisms. Human infants are prolific imitators. Infant imitation indicates observation-execution linkages in the brain prior to language and protracted learning. Investigations of neural aspects of these linkages in human infants have focused on the sensorimotor mu rhythm in the electroencephalogram, which occurs in the alpha frequency range over central electrode sites. Recent results show that the infant mu rhythm is desynchronized during action execution as well as action observation. Current work is elucidating properties of the infant mu rhythm and how it may relate to prelinguistic action processing and social understanding. Here, we consider this neuroscience research in relation to developmental psychological theory, particularly the 'Like-Me' framework, which holds that one of the chief cognitive tasks of the human infant is to map the similarity between self and other. We elucidate the value of integrating neuroscience findings with behavioural studies of infant imitation, and the reciprocal benefit of examining mirroring mechanisms from an ontogenetic perspective.

Stability of executive function and predictions to adaptive behavior from middle childhood to pre-adolescence

The shift from childhood to adolescence is characterized by rapid remodeling of the brain and increased risk-taking behaviors. Current theories hypothesize that developmental enhancements in sensitivity to affective environmental cues in adolescence may undermine executive function (EF) and increase the likelihood of problematic behaviors. In the current study, we examined the extent to which EF in childhood predicts EF in early adolescence. We also tested whether individual differences in neural responses to affective cues (rewards/punishments) in childhood serve as a biological marker for EF, sensation-seeking, academic performance, and social skills in early adolescence. At age 8, 84 children completed a gambling task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. We examined the extent to which selections resulting in rewards or losses in this task elicited (i) the P300, a post-stimulus waveform reflecting the allocation of attentional resources toward a stimulus, and (ii) the SPN, a pre-stimulus anticipatory waveform reflecting a neural representation of a "hunch" about an outcome that originates in insula and ventromedial PFC. Children also completed a Dimensional Change Card-Sort (DCCS) and Flanker task to measure EF. At age 12, 78 children repeated the DCCS and Flanker and completed a battery of questionnaires. Flanker and DCCS accuracy at age 8 predicted Flanker and DCCS performance at age 12, respectively. Individual differences in the magnitude of P300 (to losses vs. rewards) and SPN (preceding outcomes with a high probability of punishment) at age 8 predicted self-reported sensation seeking (lower) and teacher-rated academic performance (higher) at age 12. We suggest there is stability in EF from age 8 to 12, and that childhood neural sensitivity to reward and punishment predicts individual differences in sensation seeking and adaptive behaviors in children entering adolescence.

Saby J, N. Meltzoff A. Imitation and the developing social brain: infants’ somatotopic EEG patterns for acts of self and other

A leading question in developmental social-cognitive neuroscience concerns the nature and function of neural links between action perception and production in early human development. Here we document a somatotopic pattern of activity of the sensorimotor EEG mu rhythm in 14-month-old infants. EEG was recorded during interactive trials in which infants activated a novel object using their own hands or feet (“execution” trials) and watched an experimenter use her hands or feet to achieve the same goal (“observation” trials). At central electrodes overlying sensorimotor hand areas (C3/C4), mu rhythm power was reduced (indicating greater cortical activation) during infants’ execution of hand acts compared to foot acts. For the central electrode overlying the sensorimotor foot area (Cz), mu power was reduced during the execution of foot versus hand acts. Strikingly similar somatotopic patterns were found in both the action execution and observation conditions. We hypothesize that these somatotopic patterns index an intercorporeal mapping of corresponding body parts between self and other. We further propose that infants’ ability to identify self-other equivalences at the level of body parts underlies infant imitation and is an ontogenetic building block for the feelings of intersubjectivity we experience when socially engaged with other people.

Infants' somatotopic neural responses to seeing human actions: I've got you under my skin

Human infants rapidly learn new skills and customs via imitation, but the neural linkages between action perception and production are not well understood. Neuroscience studies in adults suggest that a key component of imitation–identifying the corresponding body part used in the acts of self and other–has an organized neural signature. In adults, perceiving someone using a specific body part (e.g., hand vs. foot) is associated with activation of the corresponding area of the sensory and/or motor strip in the observer’s brain–a phenomenon called neural somatotopy. Here we examine whether preverbal infants also exhibit somatotopic neural responses during the observation of others’ actions. 14-month-old infants were randomly assigned to watch an adult reach towards and touch an object using either her hand or her foot. The scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded and event-related changes in the sensorimotor mu rhythm were analyzed. Mu rhythm desynchronization was greater over hand areas of sensorimotor cortex during observation of hand actions and was greater over the foot area for observation of foot actions. This provides the first evidence that infants’ observation of someone else using a particular body part activates the corresponding areas of sensorimotor cortex. We hypothesize that this somatotopic organization in the developing brain supports imitation and cultural learning. The findings connect developmental cognitive neuroscience, adult neuroscience, action representation, and behavioral imitation.

Infant Brain Responses to Object Weight: Exploring Goal-Directed Actions and Self-Experience

Recent work has suggested the value of electroencephalographic (EEG) measures in the study of infants' processing of human action. Studies in this area have investigated desynchronization of the sensorimotor mu rhythm during action execution and action observation in infancy. Untested but critical to theory is whether the mu rhythm shows a differential response to actions which share similar goals but have different motor requirements or sensory outcomes. By varying the invisible property of object weight, we controlled for the abstract goal (reach, grasp, and lift the object), while allowing other aspects of the action to vary. The mu response during 14-month-old infants' own executed actions showed a differential hemispheric response between acting on heavier and lighter objects. EEG responses also showed sensitivity to "expected object weight" when infants simply observed an experimenter reach for objects that the infants' prior experience indicated were heavier versus lighter. Crucially, this neural reactivity was predictive - during the observation of the other reaching toward the object, before lifting occurred. This suggests that infants' own self-experience with a particular object's weight influences their processing of others' actions on the object, with implications for developmental social-cognitive neuroscience.

Neural mirroring systems: exploring the EEG μ rhythm in human infancy

How do human children come to understand the actions of other people? What neural systems are associated with the processing of others' actions and how do these systems develop, starting in infancy? These questions span cognitive psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience, and addressing them has important implications for the study of social cognition. A large amount of research has used behavioral measures to investigate infants' imitation of the actions of other people; a related but smaller literature has begun to use neurobiological measures to study of infants' action representation. Here we focus on experiments employing electroencephalographic (EEG) techniques for assessing mu rhythm desynchronization in infancy, and analyze how this work illuminates the links between action perception and production prior to the onset of language.

Goals influence memory and imitation for dynamic human action in 36-month-old children

Adults' memory for action is organized according to a hierarchy of goals. Little previous research has examined whether goals also play a crucial role in young children's memory for action, and particularly whether goal information is privileged over veridical sequential order information. The current experiment investigated 3-year-old children's (N = 40) memory for naturally occurring interleaved action sequences: Sequences in which an actor switched back and forth between carrying out actions related to two distinct goals. Such sequences allowed a test of whether children's action representations prioritize a goal interpretation over veridical sequential information. Children's memory for the action events was assessed by deferred imitation, 5-min after the demonstration had ceased. Results indicated that children's memory prioritizes goals over veridical sequential order - even to the extent that the actual sequential order is distorted in memory. These findings deepen our understanding of action processing and memory with implications for social-cognitive development.

15-month-olds' transfer of learning between touch screen and real-world displays: language cues and cognitive loads

Infants have difficulty transferring information between 2D and 3D sources. The current study extends Zack, Barr, Gerhardstein, Dickerson & Meltzoff's (2009) touch screen imitation task to examine whether the addition of specific language cues significantly facilitates 15-month-olds' transfer of learning between touch screens and real-world 3D objects. The addition of two kinds of linguistic cues (object label plus verb or nonsense name) did not elevate action imitation significantly above levels observed when such language cues were not used. Language cues hindered infants' performance in the 3D→2D direction of transfer, but only for the object label plus verb condition. The lack of a facilitative effect of language is discussed in terms of competing cognitive loads imposed by conjointly transferring information across dimensions and processing linguistic cues in an action imitation task at this age.

Learning about causes from people: observational causal learning in 24-month-old infants

How do infants and young children learn about the causal structure of the world around them? In 4 experiments we investigate whether young children initially give special weight to the outcomes of goal-directed interventions they see others perform and use this to distinguish correlations from genuine causal relations--observational causal learning. In a new 2-choice procedure, 2- to 4-year-old children saw 2 identical objects (potential causes). Activation of 1 but not the other triggered a spatially remote effect. Children systematically intervened on the causal object and predictively looked to the effect. Results fell to chance when the cause and effect were temporally reversed, so that the events were merely associated but not causally related. The youngest children (24- to 36-month-olds) were more likely to make causal inferences when covariations were the outcome of human interventions than when they were not. Observational causal learning may be a fundamental learning mechanism that enables infants to abstract the causal structure of the world.

Neural correlates of belief- and desire-reasoning in 7- and 8-year-old children: an event-related potential study

Theory of mind requires belief- and desire-understanding. Event-related brain potential (ERP) research on belief- and desire-reasoning in adults found mid-frontal activations for both desires and beliefs, and selective right-posterior activations only for beliefs. Developmentally, children understand desires before beliefs; thus, a critical question concerns whether neural specialization for belief-reasoning exists in childhood or develops later. Neural activity was recorded as 7- and 8-year-olds (N = 18) performed the same diverse-desires, diverse-beliefs, and physical control tasks used in a previous adult ERP study. Like adults, mid-frontal scalp activations were found for belief- and desire-reasoning. Moreover, analyses using correct trials alone yielded selective right-posterior activations for belief-reasoning. Results suggest developmental links between increasingly accurate understanding of complex mental states and neural specialization supporting this understanding.

Neural correlates of being imitated: an EEG study in preverbal infants

A foundational aspect of early social-emotional development is the ability to detect and respond to the actions of others who are coordinating their behavior with that of the self. Behavioral work in this area has found that infants show particular preferences for adults who are imitating them rather than adults who are carrying out noncontingent or mismatching actions. Here, we explore the neural processes related to this tendency of infants to prefer others who act like the self. Electroencephalographic (EEG) signals were recorded from 14-month-old infants while they were observing actions that either matched or mismatched the action the infant had just executed. Desynchronization of the EEG mu rhythm was greater when infants observed an action that matched their own most recently executed action. This effect was strongest immediately prior to the culmination of the goal of the observed action, which is consistent with recent ideas about the predictive nature of brain responses during action observation.

Taking versus confronting visual perspectives in preschool children

Recent evidence suggests that 3-year-olds can take other people's visual perspectives not only when they perceive different things (Level 1) but even when they see the same thing differently (Level 2). One hypothesis is that 3-year-olds are good perspective takers but cannot confront different perspectives on the same object (Perner, Stummer, Sprung, & Doherty, 2002). In 2 studies using color filters, 3-year-olds were unable to judge in what color they and an adult saw the same picture. This was the case irrespective of whether children replied verbally (pilot study) or by pointing to color samples (main study). However, 3-year-olds readily took an adult's perspective by determining which of 2 objects an adult referred to as being a certain color, independently from how the children saw the objects (main study). Taken together, these results suggest that preschoolers' difficulty is not so much taking perspectives as it is directly confronting another's view with their own-an ability that seems to be acquired between 4 and 5 years of age.