TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Action effects foster 11-month-olds’ prediction of action goals for a non-human agent JF - Infant behavior & development : an international and interdisciplinary journal N2 - 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. KW - Infancy KW - Eye tracking KW - Goal anticipation KW - Action effects KW - Agency cues Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.09.002 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 53 SP - 49 EP - 55 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - THES A1 - Adam, Maurits T1 - Action-goal predictions in infancy BT - The influence of agency cues and verbal information Y1 - 2019 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Reitenbach, Ivanina A1 - Papenmeier, Frank A1 - Gredebäck, Gustaf A1 - Elsner, Claudia A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - actions, but not for mechanical claws JF - Meteoritics & planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society N2 - 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. KW - Infancy KW - Goal saliency KW - Anticipatory gaze shifts KW - Eye tracking KW - Action processing Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.05.001 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 44 SP - 29 EP - 37 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Reitenbach, Ivanina A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Agency cues and 11-month-olds’ and adults’ anticipation of action goals JF - Cognitive Development N2 - For the processing of goal-directed actions, some accounts emphasize the importance of experience with the action or the agent. Other accounts stress the importance of agency cues. We investigated the impact of agency cues on 11-month-olds’ and adults’ goal anticipation for a grasping-action performed by a mechanical claw. With an eyetracker, we measured anticipations in two conditions, where the claw was displayed either with or without agency cues. In two experiments, 11-month-olds were predictive when agency cues were present, but reactive when no agency cues were presented. Adults were predictive in both conditions. Furthermore, 11-month-olds rapidly learned to predict the goal in the agency condition, but not in the mechanical condition. Adults’ predictions did not change across trials in the agency condition, but decelerated in the mechanical condition. Thus, agency cues and own action experience are important for infants’ and adults’ online processing of goal-directed actions by non-human agents. KW - Infants KW - Eyetracking KW - Action processing KW - Anticipatory gaze shifts KW - Agency Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.02.008 SN - 0885-2014 SN - 1879-226X VL - 43 SP - 37 EP - 48 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eiteljoerge, Sarah Fe Vivian A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Mani, Nivedita T1 - Consistency of co-occurring actions influences young children’s word learning learning JF - Royal Society Open Science N2 - Communication with young children is often multimodal in nature, involving, for example, language and actions. The simultaneous presentation of information from both domains may boost language learning by highlighting the connection between an object and a word, owing to temporal overlap in the presentation of multimodal input. However, the overlap is not merely temporal but can also covary in the extent to which particular actions co-occur with particular words and objects, e.g. carers typically produce a hopping action when talking about rabbits and a snapping action for crocodiles. The frequency with which actions and words co-occurs in the presence of the referents of these words may also impact young children’s word learning. We, therefore, examined the extent to which consistency in the co-occurrence of particular actions and words impacted children’s learning of novel word–object associations. Children (18 months, 30 months and 36–48 months) and adults were presented with two novel objects and heard their novel labels while different actions were performed on these objects, such that the particular actions and word–object pairings always co-occurred (Consistent group) or varied across trials (Inconsistent group). At test, participants saw both objects and heard one of the labels to examine whether participants recognized the target object upon hearing its label. Growth curve models revealed that 18-month-olds did not learn words for objects in either condition, and 30-month-old and 36- to 48-month-old children learned words for objects only in the Consistent condition, in contrast to adults who learned words for objects independent of the actions presented. Thus, consistency in the multimodal input influenced word learning in early childhood but not in adulthood. In terms of a dynamic systems account of word learning, our study shows how multimodal learning settings interact with the child’s perceptual abilities to shape the learning experience. KW - word learning KW - actions KW - consistency KW - variability KW - cross-domain influences Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190097 SN - 2054-5703 VL - 6 IS - 8 PB - Royal Society CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gumbsch, Christian A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Butz, Martin V. T1 - Emergent goal-anticipatory gaze in infants via event-predictive learning and inference JF - Cognitive science N2 - 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. KW - Infancy KW - Goal-anticipatory gaze KW - Computational model KW - Event cognition KW - Active inference Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13016 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 45 IS - 8 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Malden, Mass. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Adam, Maurits T1 - Infants' goal prediction for simple action events BT - the role of experience and agency cues T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object-directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants' predictive gaze-shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to-be-obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By about 6 months of age, infants show goal-predictive gaze-shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants' ability for action-goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non-human agents (e.g., object-directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action-event perspective. In particular, infants' goal-predictive gaze-shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom-up processing of perceptual information and top-down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 725 KW - action events KW - infant action-goal prediction KW - infant gaze behavior KW - eye tracking KW - feedforward processes KW - perception of agency cues Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516657 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 1 SP - 45 EP - 62 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Adam, Maurits T1 - Infants’ goal prediction for simple action events BT - the role of experience and agency cues JF - Topics in cognitive science / Cognitive Science Society N2 - Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object-directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants' predictive gaze-shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to-be-obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By about 6 months of age, infants show goal-predictive gaze-shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants' ability for action-goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non-human agents (e.g., object-directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action-event perspective. In particular, infants' goal-predictive gaze-shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom-up processing of perceptual information and top-down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. KW - Action events KW - Infant action‐ goal prediction KW - Infant gaze KW - behavior KW - Eye tracking KW - Feedforward processes KW - Perception of KW - agency  cues Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12494 SN - 1756-8765 VL - 13 IS - 1 SP - 45 EP - 62 PB - Wiley CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Gumbsch, Christian A1 - Butz, Martin V. A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - The impact of action effects on infants’ predictive gaze shifts for a non-human grasping action at 7, 11, and 18 months JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - During the observation of goal-directed actions, infants usually predict the goal at an earlier age when the agent is familiar (e.g., human hand) compared to unfamiliar (e.g., mechanical claw). These findings implicate a crucial role of the developing agentive self for infants' processing of others' action goals. Recent theoretical accounts suggest that predictive gaze behavior relies on an interplay between infants' agentive experience (top-down processes) and perceptual information about the agent and the action-event (bottom-up information; e.g., agency cues). The present study examined 7-, 11-, and 18-month-old infants' predictive gaze behavior for a grasping action performed by an unfamiliar tool, depending on infants' age-related action knowledge about tool-use and the display of the agency cue of producing a salient action effect. The results are in line with the notion of a systematic interplay between experience-based top-down processes and cue-based bottom-up information: Regardless of the salient action effect, predictive gaze shifts did not occur in the 7-month-olds (least experienced age group), but did occur in the 18-month-olds (most experienced age group). In the 11-month-olds, however, predictive gaze shifts occurred only when a salient action effect was presented. This sheds new light on how the developing agentive self, in interplay with available agency cues, supports infants' action-goal prediction also for observed tool-use actions. KW - infancy KW - predictive gaze behavior KW - eye tracking KW - tool-use actions KW - agency cues KW - developing agentive self KW - non-human grasping Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695550 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - The impact of salient action effects on 6-, 7-, and 11-month-olds’ goal-predictive gaze shifts for a human grasping action JF - PLOS ONE N2 - When infants observe a human grasping action, experience-based accounts predict that all infants familiar with grasping actions should be able to predict the goal regardless of additional agency cues such as an action effect. Cue-based accounts, however, suggest that infants use agency cues to identify and predict action goals when the action or the agent is not familiar. From these accounts, we hypothesized that younger infants would need additional agency cues such as a salient action effect to predict the goal of a human grasping action, whereas older infants should be able to predict the goal regardless of agency cues. In three experiments, we presented 6-, 7-, and 11-month-olds with videos of a manual grasping action presented either with or without an additional salient action effect (Exp. 1 and 2), or we presented 7-month-olds with videos of a mechanical claw performing a grasping action presented with a salient action effect (Exp. 3). The 6-month-olds showed tracking gaze behavior, and the 11-month-olds showed predictive gaze behavior, regardless of the action effect. However, the 7-month-olds showed predictive gaze behavior in the action-effect condition, but tracking gaze behavior in the no-action-effect condition and in the action-effect condition with a mechanical claw. The results therefore support the idea that salient action effects are especially important for infants' goal predictions from 7 months on, and that this facilitating influence of action effects is selective for the observation of human hands. KW - attention KW - eye movements KW - infants perception KW - mechanisms KW - origins Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240165 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 15 IS - 10 PB - Public Library of Science CY - San Fransisco ER -