Exploration Patterns in Spontaneous Self-Touch Actions in Infancy

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68407700%3A21230%2F25%3A00387031" target="_blank" >RIV/68407700:21230/25:00387031 - isvavai.cz</a>

Výsledek na webu

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDL63968.2025.11204454" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDL63968.2025.11204454</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICDL63968.2025.11204454" target="_blank" >10.1109/ICDL63968.2025.11204454</a>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Exploration Patterns in Spontaneous Self-Touch Actions in Infancy

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

Infants frequently touch their own bodies from the earliest months of life, raising questions about whether these self-directed actions reflect active body exploration. We hypothesize that infants’ self-touch actions are not random but rather occur in distinct latent states that differ in exploratory value, with some states yielding higher information gain about body structure and sensorimotor contingencies. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a longitudinal observational study involving four healthy full-term infants (two females, two males) aged between 6 and 37 weeks. Infants were video-recorded in a naturalistic home environment while lying supine, with minimal external distractions. Self-touch actions were manually coded to capture discrete parameters including touch location, duration, and inter-touch intervals. These events were then discretized into a high-dimensional state space and analyzed using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to infer latent behavioural states. The entropy of the emission probability matrices from the HMMs provided a measure of state variability, and information gain was quantified using the Kullback-Leibler divergence between successive probability distributions over touch locations. Our analyses revealed two distinct states differing in emission entropy, with the higher-entropy state associated with significantly greater information gain about the body. These findings suggest that early self-touch may serve as an active learning mechanism, enabling infants to gather crucial information about their own bodies.

Název v anglickém jazyce

Exploration Patterns in Spontaneous Self-Touch Actions in Infancy

Popis výsledku anglicky

Infants frequently touch their own bodies from the earliest months of life, raising questions about whether these self-directed actions reflect active body exploration. We hypothesize that infants’ self-touch actions are not random but rather occur in distinct latent states that differ in exploratory value, with some states yielding higher information gain about body structure and sensorimotor contingencies. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a longitudinal observational study involving four healthy full-term infants (two females, two males) aged between 6 and 37 weeks. Infants were video-recorded in a naturalistic home environment while lying supine, with minimal external distractions. Self-touch actions were manually coded to capture discrete parameters including touch location, duration, and inter-touch intervals. These events were then discretized into a high-dimensional state space and analyzed using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to infer latent behavioural states. The entropy of the emission probability matrices from the HMMs provided a measure of state variability, and information gain was quantified using the Kullback-Leibler divergence between successive probability distributions over touch locations. Our analyses revealed two distinct states differing in emission entropy, with the higher-entropy state associated with significantly greater information gain about the body. These findings suggest that early self-touch may serve as an active learning mechanism, enabling infants to gather crucial information about their own bodies.

Druh

D - Stať ve sborníku

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

50103 - Cognitive sciences

Projekt

Výsledek vznikl pri realizaci vícero projektů. Více informací v záložce Projekty.

Návaznosti

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Rok uplatnění

2025

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název statě ve sborníku

2025 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL)

ISBN

979-8-3315-4343-3

ISSN

—

e-ISSN

—

Počet stran výsledku

8

Strana od-do

—

Název nakladatele

IEEE Conference Publications

Místo vydání

Piscataway

Místo konání akce

Praha

Datum konání akce

16. 9. 2025

Typ akce podle státní příslušnosti

WRD - Celosvětová akce

Kód UT WoS článku

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