Summary: A study shows that children as young as three can understand the intentions of others thanks to active mirror neurons. This discovery highlights the early development of the “resonance” system, which is crucial for social cognition.
Researchers have discovered that the mylohyoid muscle of preschoolers activates when they anticipate goal-directed actions. These findings could help in the early diagnosis of conditions such as autism spectrum disorders.
Highlights:
- Early understanding: Three-year-olds use mirror neurons to understand others’ intentions.
- Muscle activation: The mylohyoid muscle is activated when observing a goal-directed action.
- Diagnostic potential: This could help in the early detection of social cognitive deficits in autism.
Source: Catholic University
From the age of three, children are able to understand others, to “mirror” those with whom they are in contact in order to imitate and anticipate their intentions. They achieve this thanks to the sophisticated neurofunctional architecture necessary to understand the intentions of others, the mirror neurons, which are already active at this age.
This is the result of a study published in the prestigious journal PNASborn from the collaboration between Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma, the scientist who discovered mirror neurons, and the research group composed of Cinzia Di Dio, Laura Miraglia, Giulia Peretti and coordinated by Antonella Marchetti, director of the psychology department of the Cattolica University, Milan campus.
“This is a very important discovery,” explains Professor Marchetti, “because it demonstrates that even at such a young age, children are equipped with the ‘resonance’ system of mirror neurons, which are the basic elements on which, over the course of development and experience, a more complex and articulated understanding of the social world will be built.”
Although preschool children are able to plan goal-directed sequences of motor actions, their understanding of the intentions of others engaged in motor tasks has not been studied in depth until now.
The group from Cattolica University, in collaboration with Professor Rizzolatti, measured the ability of preschool children to organize a sequence of motor actions by understanding the intention behind another individual’s chain of actions.
To test this ability, the researchers measured activation of the mylohyoid muscle, involved in opening the mouth, while the children grabbed a piece of food to eat or a piece of paper to put in a container.
During food grasping, mylohyoid muscle activation began several milliseconds before the end of the action. The muscle did not activate during paper grasping, suggesting a planned sequence of motor events focused on the goal of the action.
Even when children observed an experimenter performing the same grasping tasks, the mylohyoid muscle activated during observation of the feeding task.
However, as Professor Marchetti explains, “we found that muscle activation occurs more slowly compared to older children, aged 6 to 9 years (examined in previous studies), who benefit from the emergence of more sophisticated cognitive processes.”
According to the authors, the results suggest that understanding the motor intentions of others is a developing ability in preschool children.
“In conclusion,” Professor Marchetti emphasizes, “the current data provide further support for the evidence regarding the different stages of child development in this area, in line with research on infants that shows early adaptation to goal-directed motor acts.
“Overall, these results are also relevant from the point of view of early diagnosis, for example in the case of children with autism spectrum disorders, as they would allow to implement a psychophysical instrumental assessment of a possible deficit in understanding intentions and a possible alteration of the fundamental precursors of the development of social skills,” she concludes.
About this neurodevelopmental research news
Author: Nicolas Cerbino
Source: Catholic University
Contact: Nicola Cerbino – Catholic University
Picture: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Access closed.
“Chains of actions and understanding of intentions in children aged 3 to 6” by Giacomo Rizzolatti et al. PNAS
Abstract
Action chains and understanding of intentions in 3- to 6-year-old children
In intentional behavior, the final goal of an action is crucial in determining the entire sequence of motor acts. Neurons have been described in the inferior parietal lobule of monkeys, which, in addition to encoding a specific motor act (e.g., grasping), have their discharge modulated by the final goal of the intended action (e.g., grasping for food).
Many of these “action-constrained” neurons have mirror properties that respond to observation of the motor act they encode, provided that it is integrated into a specific action.
Through this mechanism, observers have an internal copy of the entire action before its execution and can thus understand the agent’s intention. The chained organization of motor acts has been demonstrated in schoolchildren.
Here we investigated whether this organization is already present in very young children. For this purpose, we recorded the EMG of the mylohyoid muscle (MH) in children aged 3 to 6 years. The results showed that preschool children, like older children, possess the chained organization of motor acts during execution.
Interestingly, compared to older children, they have a delayed ability to use this mechanism to infer others’ intentions through observation.
Finally, we found a significant negative association between children’s age and MH muscle activation during the grasping phase of eating in the observation condition. We interpreted this, tentatively, as a sign of immature control of motor acts.