How Infants Learn to Understand the Actions of Others

Humans act and interact in a social environment. Research in developmental psychology addresses the cognitive mechanisms that form the bedrock of the understanding of goal-directed actions. Recent findings indicate that early in life, actions such as grasping and pointing are already processed similarly as in adults on both the behavioural and the neurophysiological level. Research paradigms that can be applied with infants as well as with adults open up the possibility to explore social-cognitive development over a wide age range.