Chiara Turati (University of Milano-Bicocca):

Title: At the origins of mirror mechanisms: Evidence from action and emotion understanding in infancy and early childhood

Recent models consider development as gradually emerging from the reciprocal and dynamic interactions between innate predispositions and the structure of the input provided by the environment. Nonetheless, the debate about the development of mirror mechanisms is still almost confined in a strict nature vs nurture dichotomy. The talk describes a series of studies, with preverbal infants and preschool-age children, in which behavioral (visual preference, eye-tracking) and neurophysiological (EEG, EMG) measures were recorded in response to the observation of actions or emotions displayed by others. Our results suggest that (i) motor resonance effects induced by others' actions emerge gradually during the first year of life, (ii) newborn infants possess some inborn predispositions that guide their perception of body part movements relevant for action, such as hand gestures, (iii) visuo-motor experience plays an important role in infants’ visual response to hand actions, but cannot be considered as the sole dimension affecting infants’ action understanding, (iv) human action sounds elicit specific EEG responses in 7-month-old infants, and (v) 3-year-olds’ motor system is recruited for the processing of emotional expressions. Implications of these results for the early understanding of others’ actions and emotions are discussed.