Action and perception: Neural indices of learning in infants

Early human development offers a unique perspective in investigating the potential cognitive and social implications of action and perception. Specifically, during infancy, action production and action perception undergo foundational developments. One essential component to examine developments in action processing is the analysis of others’ actions as meaningful and goal-directed. Little research, however, has examined the underlying neural systems that may be associated with emerging action and perception abilities, and infants’ learning of goal-directed actions. The current study examines the mu rhythm—a brain oscillation found in the electroencephalogram (EEG)—that has been associated with action and perception. Specifically, the present work investigates whether the mu signal is related to 9-month-olds’ learning of a novel goal-directed means-end task. The findings of this study demonstrate a relation between variations in mu rhythm activity and infants’ ability to learn a novel goal-directed means-end action task (compared to a visual pattern learning task used as a comparison task). Additionally, we examined the relations between standardized assessments of early motor competence, infants’ ability to learn a novel goal-directed task, and mu rhythm activity. We found that: 1a) mu rhythm activity during observation of a grasp uniquely predicted infants’ learning on the cane training task, 1b) mu rhythm activity during observation and execution of a grasp did not uniquely predict infants’ learning on the visual pattern learning task (comparison learning task), 2) infants’ motor competence did not predict infants’ learning on the cane training task, 3) mu rhythm activity during observation and execution was not related to infants’ measure of motor competence, and 4) mu rhythm activity did not predict infants’ learning on the cane task above and beyond infants’ motor competence. The results from this study demonstrate that mu rhythm activity is a sensitive measure to detect individual differences in infants’ action and perception abilities, specifically their learning of a novel goal-directed action.

Visual Insight in Geometry

According to a traditional rationalist proposal, it is possible to attain knowledge of certain necessary truths by means of insight—an epistemic mental act that combines the 'presentational' character of perception with the a priori status usually reserved for discursive reasoning. In this dissertation, I defend the insight proposal in relation to a specific subject matter: elementary Euclidean plane geometry, as set out in Book I of Euclid's Elements. In particular, I argue that visualizations and visual experiences of diagrams allow human subjects to grasp truths of geometry by means of visual insight. In the first two chapters, I provide an initial defense of the geometrical insight proposal, drawing on a novel interpretation of Plato's Meno to motivate the view and to reply to some objections. In the remaining three chapters, I provide an account of the psychological underpinnings of geometrical insight, a task that requires considering the psychology of visual imagery alongside the details of Euclid's geometrical system. One important challenge is to explain how basic features of human visual representations can serve to ground our intuitive grasp of Euclid's postulates and other initial assumptions. A second challenge is to explain how we are able to grasp general theorems by considering diagrams that depict only special cases. I argue that both of these challenges can be met by an account that regards geometrical insight as based in visual experiences involving the combined deployment of two varieties of 'dynamic' visual imagery: one that allows the subject to visually rehearse spatial transformations of a figure's parts, and another that allows the subject to entertain alternative ways of structurally integrating the figure as a whole. It is the interplay between these two forms of dynamic imagery that enables a visual experience of a diagram, suitably animated in visual imagination, to justify belief in the propositions of Euclid’s geometry. The upshot is a novel dynamic imagery account that explains how intuitive knowledge of elementary Euclidean plane geometry can be understood as grounded in visual insight.