Neuro-Cognitive Modeling, Department of Computer Science and Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 24;19(10):e0312532. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312532. eCollection 2024.
Mental representations of the environment in infants are sparse and grow richer during their development. Anticipatory eye fixation studies show that infants aged around 7 months start to predict the goal of an observed action, e.g., an object targeted by a reaching hand. Interestingly, goal-predictive gaze shifts occur at an earlier age when the hand subsequently manipulates an object and later when an action is performed by an inanimate actor, e.g., a mechanical claw. We introduce CAPRI2 (Cognitive Action PRediction and Inference in Infants), a computational model that explains this development from a functional, algorithmic perspective. It is based on the theory that infants learn object files and events as they develop a physical reasoning system. In particular, CAPRI2 learns a generative event-predictive model, which it uses to both interpret sensory information and infer goal-directed behavior. When observing object interactions, CAPRI2 (i) interprets the unfolding interactions in terms of event-segmented dynamics, (ii) maximizes the coherence of its event interpretations, updating its internal estimates and (iii) chooses gaze behavior to minimize expected uncertainty. As a result, CAPRI2 mimics the developmental pathway of infants' goal-predictive gaze behavior. Our modeling work suggests that the involved event-predictive representations, longer-term generative model learning, and shorter-term retrospective and active inference principles constitute fundamental building blocks for the effective development of goal-predictive capacities.
婴儿对环境的心理表征是稀疏的，并在其发展过程中变得更加丰富。预期眼动固定研究表明，大约 7 个月大的婴儿开始预测观察到的动作的目标，例如，伸手去够的物体。有趣的是，当手随后操纵物体时，目标预测性的注视转移发生在更早的年龄，而当动作由无生命的演员（例如，机械爪）执行时，这种转移发生在更晚的年龄。我们引入了 CAPRI2（婴儿认知动作预测和推理），这是一个从功能和算法角度解释这种发展的计算模型。它基于这样一种理论，即婴儿在发展物理推理系统的过程中学习物体文件和事件。具体来说，CAPRI2 学习了一种生成事件预测模型，它用于解释感官信息并推断目标导向行为。当观察物体相互作用时，CAPRI2（i）根据事件分段动态来解释正在展开的相互作用，（ii）最大化其事件解释的一致性，更新其内部估计，（iii）选择注视行为以最小化预期不确定性。结果，CAPRI2 模拟了婴儿目标预测性注视行为的发展途径。我们的建模工作表明，涉及的事件预测表示、长期生成模型学习以及短期回溯和主动推理原则构成了有效发展目标预测能力的基本构建块。
