TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wang, Quan
A1  - Bolhuis, Jantina Elizabeth
A1  - Rothkopf, Constantin
A1  - Kolling, Thorsten
A1  - Knopf, Monika
A1  - Triesch, Jochen
T1  - Infants in control: Rapid anticipation of action outcomes in a gaze-contingent paradigm
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Infants' poor motor abilities limit their interaction with their environment and render studying infant cognition notoriously difficult. Exceptions are eye movements, which reach high accuracy early, but generally do not allow manipulation of the physical environment. In this study, real-time eye tracking is used to put 6- and 8-month-old infants in direct control of their visual surroundings to study the fundamental problem of discovery of agency, i.e. the ability to infer that certain sensory events are caused by one's own actions. We demonstrate that infants quickly learn to perform eye movements to trigger the appearance of new stimuli and that they anticipate the consequences of their actions in as few as 3 trials. Our findings show that infants can rapidly discover new ways of controlling their environment. We suggest that gaze-contingent paradigms offer effective new ways for studying many aspects of infant learning and cognition in an interactive fashion and provide new opportunities for behavioral training and treatment in infants.
Y1  - 2012
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/24579
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-245795
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 7
IS  - 2: e30884
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -