Prof. Dr. Sabine Hunnius

Principal investigator

About me

Together with my research group, I investigate 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

• Hunnius, S. (2022). Early cognitive development: five lessons from infant learning. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology.
• Poli, F., Mars, R.B., Serino, G., & Hunnius, S. (2020). Infants tailor their attention to maximize learning. Science Advances, 6, eabb5053.
• Zaadnoordijk, L., Meyer, M., Zaharieva, M., Kemalasari, F., van Pelt, S., & Hunnius, S. (2020). From movement to action: An EEG study into the emerging sense of agency in early infancy. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 42, 100760.
• Monroy, C.D., Meyer, M., Schroer, L., Gerson, S.A., & Hunnius, S. (2019). The infant motor system predicts actions based on visual statistical learning. NeuroImage, 185,947-954.