Ludwig Maximilian University, Leopoldstr. 13, 80802 München, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013 Oct;8(7):774-9. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss065. Epub 2012 Jun 11.
Social transmission of knowledge is one of the reasons for human evolutionary success, and it has been suggested that already human infants possess eminent social learning abilities. However, nothing is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms that subserve infants' acquisition of novel action knowledge through the observation of other people's actions and their consequences in the physical world. In an electroencephalogram study on social learning in infancy, we demonstrate that 9-month-old infants represent the environmental effects of others' actions in their own motor system, although they never achieved these effects themselves before. The results provide first insights into the neurocognitive basis of human infants' unique ability for social learning of novel action knowledge.
知识的社会传播是人类进化成功的原因之一，有人认为人类婴儿已经具备了卓越的社会学习能力。然而，对于婴儿通过观察他人的动作及其在现实世界中的后果来获得新的动作知识的神经认知机制，我们还一无所知。在一项关于婴儿社会学习的脑电图研究中，我们证明了 9 个月大的婴儿在自己的运动系统中表现出他人动作的环境影响，尽管他们在此之前从未有过这些影响。研究结果首次揭示了人类婴儿独特的社会学习新动作知识的神经认知基础。
