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A key component of social understanding is the ability to read intentions from movements. But how do we discern intentions in others' actions? What kind of intention information is actually available in the features of others' movements? Based on the assumption that intentions are hidden away in the other person's mind, standard theories of social cognition have mainly focused on the contribution of higher level processes. Here, we delineate an alternative approach to the problem of intention-from-movement understanding. We argue that intentions become "visible" in the surface flow of agents' motions. Consequently, the ability to understand others' intentions cannot be divorced from the capability to detect essential kinematics. This hypothesis has far reaching implications for how we know other minds and predict others' behavior.

Introduction: Early linguistic background, and in particular, access to language, lays the foundation of future reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing signers. The current study aims to estimate the impact of two factors - early access to sign and/or spoken language - on reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult Russian Sign Language speakers. Methods: In the eye-tracking experiment, 26 deaf and 14 hard-of-hearing native Russian Sign Language speakers read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus. Analysis of global eye-movement trajectories (scanpaths) was used to identify clusters of typical reading trajectories. The role of early access to sign and spoken language as well as vocabulary size as predictors of the more fluent reading pattern was tested. Results: Hard-of-hearing signers with early access to sign language read more fluently than those who were exposed to sign language later in life or deaf signers without access to speech sounds. No association between early access to spoken language and reading fluency was found. Discussion: Our results suggest a unique advantage for the hard-of-hearing individuals from having early access to both sign and spoken language and support the existing claims that early exposure to sign language is beneficial not only for deaf but also for hard-of-hearing children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American psychoanalyst and developmental psychologist Daniel Stern’s idea of vitality forms might suggest a new solution to explain how other minds are intensely expressed in their actions. Vitality forms characterize the expressive style of actions. The effective perception of vitality forms allows people to recognize the affective states and intentions of others in their actions, and could even open the possibility of properties of objects that are indicated by the given actions. Currently, neurophysiological studies present that there might be a neural mirror mechanism in the dorso-central insula (DCI), middle cingulate cortex (MCC), and other related cerebral areas, which serve to preferably perceive and deliver vitality forms of actions. In this article, possible types of vitality forms related to other minds, which have been brought to particular attention in recent years, have been collected and discussed in the following four areas: (1) Vitality forms on understanding non-verbal intention, (2) on understanding verbal intention, (3) vitality forms as grounding social cognition, and (4) as grounding social emotion. These four areas, however, might refer to an entirety of a binary actor-observer communicative landscape. In this review, we try to simplify the analysis by relying on two fundamental dimensions of criteria: first, the idea of vitality forms is conceived as the most basic way of observing subsequent higher-order dimensions of action, that is, understanding intention in the style of action. Thus, in the first two subsections, the relationships between vitality forms and their roles in understanding non-verbal and verbal intention have been discussed. Second, vitality forms could also be conceived as background conditions of all the other mental categories, that is, vitality forms can ground cognition and emotion in a social context. In the second dimension, the existence of social cognition or emotion depends on the existence of the stylistic kinematics of action. A grounding relation is used to distinguish a ground, that is, vitality forms, and its grounded mental categories. As relating with the domain of social perception, in this review, it has been discussed vitality forms possibly could ground social cognition and social emotion, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viewing strategies are strategies used to support visual information processing. These strategies may differ between children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI), children with ocular visual impairment, and children with normal vision since visual impairment might have an impact on viewing behavior. In current visual rehabilitation practice a variety of strategies is used without consideration of the differences in etiology of the visual impairment or in the spontaneous viewing strategies used. This systematic scoping review focuses on viewing strategies used during near school-based tasks like reading and on possible interventions aimed at viewing strategies. The goal is threefold: (1) creating a clear concept of viewing strategies, (2) mapping differences in viewing strategies between children with ocular visual impairment, children with CVI and children with normal vision, and (3) identifying interventions that can improve visual processing by targeting viewing strategies. Four databases were used to conduct the literature search: PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO and Cochrane. Seven hundred and ninety-nine articles were screened by two independent reviewers using PRISMA reporting guidelines of which 30 were included for qualitative analysis. Only five studies explicitly mentioned strategies used during visual processing, namely gaze strategies, reading strategies and search strategies. We define a viewing strategy as a conscious and systematic way of viewing during task performance. The results of this review are integrated with different attention network systems, which provide direction on how to design future interventions targeting the use of viewing strategies to improve different aspects of visual processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal synchrony – the tendency for social partners to temporally co-ordinate their behaviour when interacting – is a ubiquitous feature of social interactions. Synchronous interactions play a key role in development, and promote social bonding and a range of pro-social behavioural outcomes across the lifespan. The process of achieving and maintaining interpersonal synchrony is highly complex, with inputs required from across perceptual, temporal, motor, and socio-cognitive domains. In this conceptual analysis, we synthesise evidence from across these domains to establish the key components underpinning successful non-verbal interpersonal synchrony, how such processes interact, and factors that may moderate their operation. We also consider emerging evidence that interpersonal synchrony is reduced in autistic populations. We use our account of the components contributing to interpersonal synchrony in the typical population to identify potential points of divergence in interpersonal synchrony in autism. The relationship between interpersonal synchrony and broader aspects of social communication in autism are also considered, together with implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action understanding of children develops from simple associative learning to mentalizing. With the rise of embodied cognition, the role of interoception in action observation and action understanding has received more attention. From a developmental perspective, this study proposes a novel developmental model that explores how interoception promotes action understanding of children across ages. In early infancy, most actions observed in infants come from interactions with their caregivers. Babies learn about action effects through automatic interoceptive processing and interoceptive feedback. Interoception in early infancy is not fully developed, such as the not fully developed gastrointestinal tract and intestinal nervous system. Therefore, in early infancy, action understanding is based on low-level and original interoceptive information. At this stage, after observing the actions of others, infants can create mental representations or even imitate actions without external visual feedback, which requires interoception to provide internal reference information. By early childhood, children begin to infer action intentions of other people by integrating various types of information to reach the mentalizing level. Interoception processing requires the integration of multiple internal signals, which promotes the information integration ability of children. Interoception also provides inner information for reasoning about action intention. This review also discussed the neural mechanisms of interoception and possible ways by which it could promote action understanding of children. In early infancy, the central autonomic neural network (CAN) automatically processes and responds to the actions of caregivers on infants, providing interoceptive information for action understanding of infants. In infancy, the growth of the somatomotor system provides important internal reference information for observing and imitating the actions of infants. In early childhood, the development of interoception of children facilitates the integration of internal and external information, which promotes the mentalization of action understanding of children. According to the proposed developmental model of action understanding of children promoted by interoception, there are multilevel and stage-dependent characteristics that impact the role of interoception in action understanding of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing others' gaze informs us about relevant matters in the environment. Humans' sensitivity to gaze cues and our ability to use this information to focus our own attention is crucial to learning, social coordination, and survival. Gaze can also be a deliberate social signal which captures and directs the gaze of others toward an object of interest. In the current study, we investigated whether the intention to actively communicate one's own attentional focus can be inferred from the dynamics of gaze alone. We used a triadic gaze interaction paradigm based on the recently proposed classification of attentional states and respective gaze patterns in person-object-person interactions, the so-called "social gaze space (SGS)." Twenty-eight participants interacted with a computer controlled virtual agent while they assumed to interact with a real human. During the experiment, the virtual agent engaged in various gaze patterns which were determined by the agent's attentional communicative state, as described by the concept of SGS. After each interaction, participants were asked to judge whether the other person was trying to deliberately interact with them. Results show that participants were able to infer the communicative intention solely from the agent's gaze behavior. The results substantiate claims about the pivotal role of gaze in social coordination and relationship formation. Our results further reveal that social expectations are reflected in differential responses to the displayed gaze patterns and may be crucial for impression formation during gaze-based interaction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to document the experience of interactivity in continuous and contingent triadic gaze interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The embodied approach to cognition consists in a range of theoretical proposals sharing the idea that our concepts are constitutively shaped by the physical and social constraints of our body and environment. Still far from a mutually enriching interplay, in recent years embodied and psychoanalytic approaches are converging on similar constructs as the ones of intersubjectivity, bodily self, and affective quality of verbal communication. Some efforts to cope with the sentient subject were already present in classical cognitivism: having expunged desires and conflicts from the cognitive harmony , bodily emotions re-emerged but only as a noisy dynamic friction. In contrast, the new, neural, embodied cognitive science with its focus on bodily effects/affects has enabled a dialogue between neuro-cognitive perspectives and clinic-psychological ones, through shared conceptual frameworks. I will address crucial issues that should be faced on this reconciling path. With reference to two kinds of contemporary addictions – internet addiction disorder and eating disorders – I will introduce a possible therapeutic approach that is built upon the core role of the acting-sentient bodily self in a dynamic-social and affective environment. In Psychoanalytic Psychodrama, the spontaneous re-enactment of a past (socially and physically constrained) experience is actualized by means of the other, the Auxiliary Ego. This allows homeostatic and social-emotional affects, i.e., drives and instincts, to be re-experienced by the agent, the Protagonist, in a safe scenario. The director-psychoanalyst smoothly traces back this simulation to the motivated, and constrained, early proximal embodied interactions with significant others, and to the related instinctual conflicting aims. The psychoanalytic reframing of classical psychodrama does not merely exploit its original cathartic function, rather stands out for exploring the interpersonal constitution of the self, through an actual "re-somatization" of psychoanalytic therapy. Unspoken/unspeakable feelings pop up on stage: the strength of this treatment mainly rests on re-establishing the priority of the embodied Self over the narrative Self. By pointing out the possible conflicts between these two selves, this method can broaden the embodied cognition perspective. The psychodramatic approach will be briefly discussed in light of connectionist models, to finally address linguistic and methodological pivotal issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct gaze is a powerful social cue able to capture the onlooker’s attention. Beside gaze, head and limb movements as well can provide relevant sources of information for social interaction. This study investigated the joint role of direct gaze and hand gestures on onlookers corticospinal excitability (CE). In two experiments we manipulated the temporal and spatial aspects of observed gaze and hand behavior to assess their role in affecting motor preparation. To do this, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on the primary motor cortex (M1) coupled with electromyography (EMG) recording was used in two experiments. In the crucial manipulation, we showed to participants four video clips of an actor who initially displayed eye contact while starting a social request gesture, and then completed the action while directing his gaze toward a salient object for the interaction. This way, the observed gaze potentially expressed the intention to interact. Eye tracking data confirmed that gaze manipulation was effective in drawing observers’ attention to the actor’s hand gesture. In the attempt to reveal possible time-locked modulations, we tracked CE at the onset and offset of the request gesture. Neurophysiological results showed an early CE modulation when the actor was about to start the request gesture looking straight to the participants, compared to when his gaze was averted from the gesture. This effect was time-locked to the kinematics of the actor’s arm movement. Overall, data from the two experiments seem to indicate that the joint contribution of direct gaze and precocious kinematic information, gained while a request gesture is on the verge of beginning, increases the subjective experience of involvement and allows observers to prepare for an appropriate social interaction. On the contrary, the separation of gaze cues and body kinematics can have adverse effects on social motor preparation. CE is highly susceptible to biological cues, such as averted gaze, which is able to automatically capture and divert observer’s attention. This point to the existence of heuristics based on early action and gaze cues that would allow observers to interact appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions are believed to converge both through emotional mimicry and social appraisal. The present study compared contagion of anger and happiness. In Experiment 1, participants viewed dynamic angry and happy faces, with facial electromyography recorded from the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii as emotional mimicry. Self-reported emotional experiences were analyzed as emotional contagion. Experiment 2 manipulated social appraisal as the gaze of expression toward the target. The results showed that there was emotional contagion for angry and happy expressions both in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Experiment 1 indicated an overt mimicry pattern for happy faces, but not for angry faces. Experiment 2 found an influence of social appraisal on angry contagion but not on happy diffusion. The two experiments suggest that the underlying processes of emotional mimicry and social appraisal are differentially relevant for different emotional contagion, with happiness processing following a mimicry-based path to emotional contagion, and anger processing requiring social appraisal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans excel at recognizing (or inferring) another's distal intentions, and recent experiments suggest that this may be possible using only subtle kinematic cues elicited during early phases of movement. Still, the cognitive and computational mechanisms underlying the recognition of intentional (sequential) actions are incompletely known and it is unclear whether kinematic cues alone are sufficient for this task, or if it instead requires additional mechanisms (e.g., prior information) that may be more difficult to fully characterize in empirical studies. Here we present a computationally-guided analysis of the execution and recognition of intentional actions that is rooted in theories of motor control and the coarticulation of sequential actions. In our simulations, when a performer agent coarticulates two successive actions in an action sequence (e.g., "reach-to-grasp" a bottle and "grasp-to-pour"), he automatically produces kinematic cues that an observer agent can reliably use to recognize the performer's intention early on, during the execution of the first part of the sequence. This analysis lends computational-level support for the idea that kinematic cues may be sufficiently informative for early intention recognition. Furthermore, it suggests that the social benefits of coarticulation may be a byproduct of a fundamental imperative to optimize sequential actions. Finally, we discuss possible ways a performer agent may combine automatic (coarticulation) and strategic (signaling) ways to facilitate, or hinder, an observer's action recognition processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In joint action, multiple people coordinate their actions to perform a task together. This often requires precise temporal and spatial coordination. How do co-actors achieve this? How do they coordinate their actions toward a shared task goal? Here, we provide an overview of the mental representations involved in joint action, discuss how co-actors share sensorimotor information and what general mechanisms support coordination with others. By deliberately extending the review to aspects such as the cultural context in which a joint action takes place, we pay tribute to the complex and variable nature of this social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cortical/cerebral visual impairment (CVI) is clinically defined as significant visual dysfunction caused by injury to visual pathways and structures occurring during early perinatal development. Depending on the location and extent of damage, children with CVI often present with a myriad of visual deficits including decreased visual acuity and impaired visual field function. Most striking, however, are impairments in visual processing and attention which have a significant impact on learning, development, and independence. Within the educational arena, current evidence suggests that strategies designed for individuals with ocular visual impairment are not effective in the case of CVI. We propose that this variance may be related to differences in compensatory neuroplasticity related to the type of visual impairment, as well as underlying alterations in brain structural connectivity. We discuss the etiology and nature of visual impairments related to CVI, and how advanced neuroimaging techniques (i.e., diffusion-based imaging) may help uncover differences between ocular and cerebral causes of visual dysfunction. Revealing these differences may help in developing future strategies for the education and rehabilitation of individuals living with visual impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The transition to parenthood, from pregnancy to postpartum period, is a critical process, particularly for couples expecting twins. There is very little literature regarding the links between anxiety, depression, dyadic adjustment, parental stress, and infant temperament spanning from pregnancy to postpartum. This study has two aims: first, to examine whether mothers’ and fathers’ anxiety, depression, and dyadic adjustment, assessed at the sixth month of pregnancy and 3 months postpartum, are associated with infants’ negative affectivity (NA) and parenting stress; second, to examine whether there is any difference between fathers’ and mothers’ levels of parenting stress and perception of the twins’ temperament, as well as to evaluate, separately for mothers and fathers, whether the levels of parenting stress and perception of child temperament differ for each twin. Method: The study participants were 58 parents (29 couples) and their healthy 58 twin babies (51.7% boys, 48.3% girls). Mothers’ ages ranged from 30 to 44 years, (MAge = 36.3 years, SD = 3.2 years), and fathers’ ages ranged from 32 to 52 years, (MAge = 38.2 years, SD = 4.4 years). The parents, during the pregnancy period and 3 months after delivery, filled out the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Three months after delivery they also filled out the Parenting Stress Index—Short Form and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised. Results: The analyses showed a significant correlation between parental anxiety/depression symptoms and infants’ NA and parenting stress (in both mothers and fathers). Moreover, compared to fathers, mothers reported higher scores on specific dimensions of the infants’ NA, [t(28) = -2.62 and p < 0.05; t(28) = 2.09 and p < 0.05], and parenting stress, [t(28) = 2.19 and p < 0.05; t(28) = 2.23 and p < 0.05], but only for Twin 2. Finally, the results showed that mothers’ perceptions of child temperament vary between two twins, [e.g., distress to limitations: t(28) = 2.08 and p < 0.05]. Discussion: This study highlights the peculiarity of twin parenthood during the fourth trimester. In particular, the differences between twins’ mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions are relevant from a clinical perspective and for perinatal professionals. It would be interesting to study the long-term impact of mothers’ and fathers’ differing perceptions of their twins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cerebral visual impairment (CVI) has become the primary cause of visual impairment and blindness in children in industrialized countries. Its prevalence has increased sharply, due to increased survival rates of children who sustain severe neurological conditions during the perinatal period. Improved diagnosis has probably contributed to this increase. As in adults, the nature and severity of CVI in children relate to the cause, location and extent of damage to the brain. In the present paper, we define CVI and how this impacts on visual function. We then define developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and discuss the link between CVI and DCD. The neuroanatomical correlates and aetiologies of DCD are also presented in relationship with CVI as well as the consequences of perinatal asphyxia (PA) and preterm birth on the occurrence and nature of DCD and CVI. This paper underlines why there are both clinical and theoretical reasons to disentangle CVI and DCD, and to categorize the features with more precision. In order to offer the most appropriate rehabilitation, we propose a systematic and rapid evaluation of visual function in at-risk children who have survived preterm birth or PA whether or not they have been diagnosed with cerebral palsy or DCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action priming following action observation is thought to be caused by the observed action kinematics being represented in the same brain areas as those used for action execution. But, action priming can also be explained by shared goal representations, with compatibility between observation of the agent's gaze and the intended action of the observer. To assess the contribution of action kinematics and eye-gaze cues in the prediction of an agent's action goal and action priming, participants observed actions where the availability of both cues was manipulated. Action observation was followed by action execution, and the congruency between the target of the agent's and observer's actions, and the congruency between the observed and executed action spatial location were manipulated. Eye movements were recorded during the observation phase, and the action priming was assessed using motion analysis. The results showed that the observation of gaze information influenced the observer's prediction speed to attend to the target, and that observation of action kinematic information influenced the accuracy of these predictions. Motion analysis results showed that observed action cues alone primed both spatial incongruent and object congruent actions, consistent with the idea that the prime effect was driven by similarity between goals and kinematics. The observation of action and eye-gaze cues together induced a prime effect complementarily sensitive to object and spatial congruency. While observation of the agent's action kinematics triggered an object-centered and kinematic-centered action representation, independently, the complementary observation of eye-gaze triggered a more fine-grained representation illustrating a specification of action kinematics toward the selected goal. Even though both cues differentially contributed to action priming, their complementary integration led to a more refined pattern of action priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]