What We Do
The BabyBRAIN group investigates the developmental mechanisms and neurocognitive changes underlying early social-cognitive development. On the one hand, we study how infants perceive other persons and, as their development progresses, come to understand what others are doing and thinking. On the other hand, we investigate how infants develop to become efficient and skilled agents themselves. As part of this research line, we carry out studies on infants' action processing and action understanding as well as on imitation, tool-use, action planning, and joint action in early childhood. We make use of state-of-the-art techniques of infancy research, such as remote infrared eye-tracking, EEG and NIRS.
Selected Publications
Stapel, J.C., Hunnius, S., Meyer, M., & Bekkering, H. (2016). Motor system contribution to action prediction: Temporal accuracy depends on motor experience. Cognition, 148, 71–78. [abstract]
Gerson, S., Bekkering, H., & Hunnius, S. (2015). Short-term motor training, but not observational training, alters neurocognitive mechanisms of action processing in infancy. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 1207-1214. [abstract]
Meyer, M., Bekkering, H., Haartsen, R., Stapel, J.C., & Hunnius, S. (2015). The role of action prediction and inhibitory control for joint action coordination in toddlers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 139, 203–220. [abstract]
Hunnius, S. & Bekkering, H. (2014). What are you doing? How active and observational experience shape infants’ action understanding. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 369. [abstract]
Meyer, M., Bekkering, H., Janssen, D.J.C., de Bruijn, E.R.A., & Hunnius, S. (2014). Neural correlates of feedback processing in toddlers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26, 1519-1520. [abstract]
Hunnius, S. & Bekkering, H. (2010). The early development of object knowledge: A study on infants' visual anticipations during action observation. Developmental Psychology, 46, 446-454. [abstract, pdf]
van Elk, M., van Schie, H.T., Hunnius, S., Vesper, C. & Bekkering, H. (2008). You’ll never crawl alone: Neurophysiological evidence for experience-dependent motor resonance in infancy. Neuroimage, 43, 808-814. [abstract, pdf]