Cognitive and social contributors in the development of intentional action understanding

De Moor, Charlotte 2021. Cognitive and social contributors in the development of intentional action understanding. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on the role of comparison, motor skill, exposure to infant-directed action, and learned actions associated with objects and tools in facilitating development of intentional action understanding. In chapter 2, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to investigate whether 12-month-olds can generalise understanding about intentional relations from comparison training to visually predict the outcome of a novel action that they had never seen before. Our findings revealed a marginally significant trend such that infants who underwent comparison training made a higher proportion of accurate visual predictions than infants in a control condition. In chapter 3, we used a similar eye-tracking paradigm along with a motor task to investigate whether 10-month-olds can learn from comparison whilst accounting for individual differences in infants’ motor ability. These findings revealed the reverse trend to that found in chapter 2. Also, infants in a control condition with low motor ability made a higher proportion of accurate predictions than infants in the same condition with high motor ability. Findings also imply that comparing an easier tool-use action with a more difficult one is more efficient for facilitating comparison than vice versa. In chapter 4, we investigated whether mothers’ use of infant-directed action (motionese) during toy demonstrations facilitates 10-month-olds’ action prediction in our eyetracking paradigm. More exchanges and less joint contact of toys were associated with infants’ accurate predictions. In chapter 5, we investigated how the meaningful features of objects and tools inform adults’ prediction of how an action will unfold. When observing an actor eat from a spoon in an unusual manner, sensorimotor activation measured using EEG was greater than when observing an efficient spoon eating action, signifying greater prediction error. Together these findings further our understanding of, and raise questions about, how intentional understanding comes about through different cognitive and social processes.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	17 May 2022
Last Modified:	14 Dec 2022 02:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/149791

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