ERIC Number: EJ1194811
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Nov
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
EISSN: N/A
Syntactical Regularities of Action Sequences in the Infant Brain: When Structure Matters
Maffongelli, Laura; Antognini, Katharina; Daum, Moritz M.
Developmental Science, v21 n6 e12682 Nov 2018
Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing research question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the interrelation between verbal and non-verbal forms of social interactions, that is, language and action. Perceiving "how" actions are performed and "why" they are performed in a certain way is crucial for the observer to anticipate the actor's goal and to prepare an appropriate response. It is suggested that predicting upcoming events in a given action sequence can be compared to the way we process the language information flow. Goal-directed actions can be sequenced in small units, which are organized according to a hierarchical plan, resembling the hierarchical organization of language. Research on adults suggests that manipulating the action structure (i.e., action syntax) leads to analogous cortical signatures as a similar manipulation of a sentence structure (i.e., language syntax). Whereas in adults language and action knowledge are based on life-time experience, in infants both domains are still developing. The current study examined the neural processing of structural violations of observed goal-directed action sequences in infants at 6-7 months, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Results showed that a structural violation of the action sequence elicited bilateral frontal positivity effects. This suggests that infants capture structural regularities, and it adds a crucial element to the understanding of general syntactic regularities and their violation from an ontogenetic perspective.
Descriptors: Syntax, Sequential Learning, Infants, Brain, Goal Orientation, Cognitive Processes, Responses, Neurology
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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