@article{AdamElsner2018,
  author    = {Adam, Maurits and Elsner, Birgit},
  title     = {Action effects foster 11-month-olds' prediction of action goals for a non-human agent},
  series = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal},
  volume    = {53},
  journal   = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {0163-6383},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.09.002},
  pages     = {49 -- 55},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Action effects have been stated to be important for infants' processing of goal-directed actions. In this study, 11-month-olds showed equally fast predictive gaze shifts to a claw's action goal when the grasping action was presented either with three agency cues (self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal achievement and a salient action effect) or with only a salient action effect, but infants showed tracking gaze when the claw showed only self-propelled movement and equifinality of goal achievement. The results suggest that action effects, compared to purely kinematic cues, seem to be especially important for infants' online processing of goal-directed actions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GumbschAdamElsneretal.2021,
  author    = {Gumbsch, Christian and Adam, Maurits and Elsner, Birgit and Butz, Martin V.},
  title     = {Emergent goal-anticipatory gaze in infants via event-predictive learning and inference},
  series = {Cognitive science},
  volume    = {45},
  journal   = {Cognitive science},
  number    = {8},
  publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell},
  address   = {Malden, Mass.},
  issn      = {1551-6709},
  doi       = {10.1111/cogs.13016},
  pages     = {26},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {From about 7 months of age onward, infants start to reliably fixate the goal of an observed action, such as a grasp, before the action is complete. The available research has identified a variety of factors that influence such goal-anticipatory gaze shifts, including the experience with the shown action events and familiarity with the observed agents. However, the underlying cognitive processes are still heavily debated. We propose that our minds (i) tend to structure sensorimotor dynamics into probabilistic, generative event-predictive, and event boundary predictive models, and, meanwhile, (ii) choose actions with the objective to minimize predicted uncertainty. We implement this proposition by means of event-predictive learning and active inference. The implemented learning mechanism induces an inductive, event-predictive bias, thus developing schematic encodings of experienced events and event boundaries. The implemented active inference principle chooses actions by aiming at minimizing expected future uncertainty. We train our system on multiple object-manipulation events. As a result, the generation of goal-anticipatory gaze shifts emerges while learning about object manipulations: the model starts fixating the inferred goal already at the start of an observed event after having sampled some experience with possible events and when a familiar agent (i.e., a hand) is involved. Meanwhile, the model keeps reactively tracking an unfamiliar agent (i.e., a mechanical claw) that is performing the same movement. We qualitatively compare these modeling results to behavioral data of infants and conclude that event-predictive learning combined with active inference may be critical for eliciting goal-anticipatory gaze behavior in infants.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{AdamReitenbachPapenmeieretal.2016,
  author    = {Adam, Maurits and Reitenbach, Ivanina and Papenmeier, Frank and Gredeb{\"a}ck, Gustaf and Elsner, Claudia and Elsner, Birgit},
  title     = {actions, but not for mechanical claws},
  series = {Meteoritics \& planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society},
  volume    = {44},
  journal   = {Meteoritics \& planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {0163-6383},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.05.001},
  pages     = {29 -- 37},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Previous research indicates that infants' prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds' action prediction. Infants' (N = 49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants' predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants' action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience.},
  language  = {en}
}