Publications

Action processing

Everyday human action is strikingly complex. In the course of accomplishing our everyday goals and intentions, we move rapidly about the world contacting an enormous array of diverse objects for different purposes, with few pauses to demarcate where one action ends and the next begins. Despite such complexity, when we observe others in action we readily process the complex motion stream with little conscious effort. As yet, much remains mysterious about the cognitive mechanisms that enable such skilled processing of dynamic human action. One intriguing developmental question is how infants even start at identifying distinct acts within the continuous motion stream. This research pursues two primary goals: First, to investigate whether infants possess skills for identifying individual actions within the continuous motion stream, and second, to discover how they might do so.

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0214484. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. To view publications related to action processing, please click here.

Intentions

Beginning in infancy, humans acquire knowledge at a pace far outstripping that found in any other species. Recent evidence indicates that interpersonal understanding -- in particular, skill at inferring others' intentions -- plays a pivotal role in this achievement. Infants as young as 12 to 18 months actively utilize clues to others' intentions to guide their interpretation of language, emotion, and action more generally. In the language domain, for example, on hearing a new word, infants spontaneously check the speaker for intentional clues such as gaze direction, emotional expression, gestures, and body posture, and interpret the word in light of such information. By capitalizing on information about intentions, infants are able to avoid a wide range of potential errors, and to quickly learn relevant new skills. Current research is exploring the origins and developmental course of such early -emerging interpersonal skill, ultimately with an eye to understanding how disruptions in such abilities affect children's cognitive an social development. To view publications related to intentional understanding, please click here.

Word learning

To view publications related to word learning, please click here.

To view a list of presentations and talks given by Dr. Baldwin, please click here.