Body Imagery and Posture Effects in Development and Learning

Project Information

BIPEDAL

Grant agreement ID: 101027836

DOI

10.3030/101027836

Project terminated on 31 August 2025

EC signature date 31 March 2021

Start date 10 October 2022

End date 9 October 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 257 561,28

EU contribution

€ 257 561,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BIPEDAL (Body Imagery and Posture Effects in Development and Learning)

Reporting period: 2024-10-10 to 2025-10-09

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The purpose of this project is to learn how infants get a sense of their own bodies, and how they use their own bodies to learn about other people and the world around them. When infants are born, they cannot hold their own heads up. Less than two years later, they can walk, dance, and run around. When infants are learning, they rely on things they have seen, felt, and experienced. One of the earliest ways that infants begin to learn about other people is by watching their actions and learning to predict the outcomes. For infants, learning to do something new or “produce” a new action, leads to understanding or “perceiving” what someone else is doing better. Parts of the brain that are involved in movement and doing actions are also active when we watch someone else doing the same thing. This is true for infants. Different parts of the brain control different parts of the body. This means they are "somatotopic". For example, when we do something with our hands (or watch someone else do so), a different part of the brain is active than when we are doing (or watching) an action with the feet.

The first scientific objective of this project was to study somatotopic activity in motor areas of the brain as infants observe actions using different parts of the body. Preliminary analysis of our data suggests a link between somatotopic activity and infants' fine and gross motor skills. Our second objective was to understand how the motor skills that babies can perform affect their responses to other people’s actions. This objective involved revisiting historical measures of motor development, and finding new ways to measure motor skills. Revisiting past research, we find new phenomena in our data including the omission of the index finger in grasping. Our third objective was to understand how much infants are making reference to, and using, their own bodies and motor systems to learn about other people’s actions. We found that gently restricting 12-month-olds' ability to perform grasping actions affects their processing of others' grasping actions, with effects most pronounced for babies with better motor skills. Our fourth objective was to look at basic forms of perspective-taking (e.g. imagining what something looks like from another person’s point of view) and examine how motor imagery plays a role in them. Preliminary analysis shows robust engagement of motor processes during motor imagery tasks regardless of viewer perspective or posture.

The project addressed fundamental aspects of cognitive, social and motor development. The overall conclusion of the work is that motor skills support body representation and social development. An improved understanding of how motor development supports development more broadly is relevant for practitioners in early years care and education, and for parents and caregivers of babies and young children.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Secondment, UCD, Oct 2022 - Jan 2023
To study infant motor development, we need good measures of key skills. We compared scoring of a milestone - reaching across the body - between human scorers and an automated scoring program. The study found that although there was high agreement between human and machine scoring on some metrics, others showed low agreement.

Outgoing period, UW, Jan 2023 - Oct 2024

(i) Effects of hand posture on infant action perception (12-month-olds): In a study with 48 infants, we found that a restriction of the infants’ hand movements made it more challenging for them to identify the actor’s target object. Thus, when an infant’s ability to perform that action overtly is inhibited, so too is their ability to recruit motor processes to encode the other person’s action. This work was presented at conferences in Glasgow, Seattle and Budapest. It is under revision for the journal Infancy.
(ii) MEG study of infant action perception (9-month-olds): We brought 20 infants into the MEG laboratory for a live-action version of an infant action perception paradigm, in which the infant watches and performs reaching actions. Data are currently being processed and analysed and results will be used to support further work in the area.
(iii) Measurement of motor performance (6- to 18-month-olds): Motor development in infancy follows a trajectory of well-described milestones. There is variation among infants in the age at which they attain these milestones. We collected video data from 142 infants aged 6, 9, 12, and 18 months using a paradigm designed to elicit reaching and grasping behaviour, based on paradigms used since the 1930s. We found differences in infants' finger use compared to 1990s data.
(iv) Training objectives: The Fellow received training in a new method, MEG, and benefited from additional training in her existing areas of expertise beyond her European network.

Return period, UCD, Oct 2024 - Aug 2025
(i) EEG study of motor representation of action (4 to 14-month-olds): A cross-sectional study of 48 infants was conducted, to examine how the neural motor response to other people's actions changes with age and with motor skill development. Preliminary results were presented at FITNG conference (Dublin 2025). Among 9-month-olds, better fine motor skills are associated with a stronger motor response to other people's actions. Gross motor skills are associated with a greater distinction in the response to hand and foot actions.
(ii) EEG study on visuo-spatial and motor processes: Two experiments were run with adult participants, to understand how motor imagery is used to determine if a presented hand is a left or right hand, a task with motor and spatial components. Results suggest that people may use embodied processes to solve this task. Rather than imagining rotating their wrist, they may imagine moving their entire bodies to fit the presented hand to their own.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project resulted in the development of new paradigms for the study of infant action perception, particularly through the use of safe, tolerable hand posture manipulation. It resulted in new datasets exploring (i) impact of posture on infants’ perception of other people’s actions and goals, (ii) performance of reaching and grasping behaviour by infants across the first 1.5 years of life, (iii) infant neural responses to simple performed and observed actions, recorded with MEG, (iv) automated methods in assessing performance of motor milestones by infants in natural settings, (v) cortical neural response sto hand and foot actions from 4 to 14 months of age, and (vi) neural and behavioural measures of mental motor imagery during spatial transformations.
These results will enable further research in this area, targeting the question of how humans initially get a sense of their own bodies, and how they use motor processes to relate to other people. Work has been submitted to and published in peer-reviewed journals. Further outputs are expected once target sample sizes are met and data processing and analysis is completed. An industry collaboration has been developed on the back of the themes of this project.
Direct impacts of the project include training of the Fellow in infant MEG research and data analysis. This is an emerging area, as new technologies enable MEG research with special populations. The project also equipped the Fellow with skills expected in her new role as Assistant Professor, including project management (PM-squared methodology), grant writing, and the mentorship and supervision of postgraduate students.

Image of live-action reaching paradigm.

Infographic created with I-LABS.

Depiction of motor interference method.