Cognition 195 (2020) 104126

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Cognition
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cognit

Two-day-old newborns learn to discriminate accelerated-decelerated T

biological kinematics from constant velocity motion
⁎
Laila Craigheroa, , Valentina Ghirardia, Marco Lunghib, Fiorenza Panina, Francesca Simionb
a
Department of Biomedical and Specialty Surgical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Italy
b
Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padova, Italy

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Already in uterus the hand moves with the typical accelerated-decelerated kinematics of goal-directed actions
Action observation and, from the twenty-second week of pregnancy, the unborn shows the ability to modulate the velocity of the
Sensorimotor representations movement depending on the nature of the target. According to the direct matching hypothesis, this motor
Biological motion knowledge may be sufficient to attune neonates' motion perception—like adults'—to biological kinematics.
Point-light displays
Using dots configuration motions which varied with respect to the kinematics of goal-directed actions, we ob-
Preferential looking technique
Infant-control visual habituation technique
served that two-day-old human newborns did not show any spontaneous preference for either biological ac-
celerated-decelerated motion or non-biological constant velocity motion when these were simultaneously pre-
sented in a standard preferential looking paradigm. In contrast, newborns preferred the biological kinematics
after the repeated visual presentation of the different motions in a standard infant-control visual habituation
paradigm. We propose that present results indicate that the relationship between perception and action does not
require only action development but also the accumulation of sufficient perceptual experience. They also suggest
a fast plasticity of the sensorimotor system in linking an already acquired motor knowledge with a newly ex-
perienced congruent visual stimulation.

1. Introduction Gangitano, Mottaghy, & Pascual-Leone, 2001; Montagna, Cerri,

Biological motion hypothesis of action anticipation claims that ki-
nematic information from biological motion is sufficient for anticipa-
tion of action goals to occur (Elsner, Falck-Ytter, & Gredebäck, 2012).
Clear evidence of action anticipation is the so-called proactive-gaze, the
ability to shift gaze, and consequently attention (Corbetta, 1998; Nobre,
Gitelman, Dias, & Mesulam, 2000), from a reaching hand to the goal of
the action before the hand arrives at its goal. Therefore, when subjects
observe an action, gaze leads the hand to objects to be grasped in a
predictive, rather than reactive way. That is highly similar to the ga-
ze–hand coordination when they perform the task themselves
(Flanagan & Johansson, 2003; Rotman, 2006). Based on the direct
matching hypothesis, proactive-gaze is considered to be the con-
sequence of the fact that during action observation humans auto-
matically implement motor programs equivalent to those used in action
(Iacoboni, 1999; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004; Rizzolatti, Fogassi, &
Gallese, 2001), as shown by electrophysiological experiments in human
adults (Borroni & Baldissera, 2008; Brighina, Bua, Oliveri, Piazza, &
Fierro, 2000; Clark, Tremblay, & Ste-Marie, 2004; Craighero, Zorzi,
Canto, & Franca, 2014; Fadiga, Fogassi, Pavesi, & Rizzolatti, 1995;
Borroni, & Baldissera, 2005). This implies that the development of
proactive goal-directed eye movements is dependent on action devel-
opment, as supported by several studies showing that the onset of in-
fants' proactive-gaze during observation of others' action is synchro-
nized with the onset of their own ability to perform that action (Falck-
Ytter, Gredebäck, & von Hofsten, 2006; Gredebäck, Stasiewicz, Falck-
Ytter, von Hofsten, & Rosander, 2009; Kanakogi & Itakura, 2011).
Biological motion hypothesis of action anticipation is supported by
the result of an anticipatory eye movement paradigm, in which adult
participants were presented with a point-light (PL) representation
(Johansson, 1973, 1976) of a hand reaching for a goal object or a non-
biological version of the same manual PL display (Elsner et al., 2012).
PL displays can be used to disentangle the role of kinematic information
from other types of information, such as texture, and color, that are
intrinsically associated with everyday human reaching actions. In the
biological motion condition the velocity and motion profile of the PL
markers followed the typical velocity profile of human goal-directed
hand actions. This is characterized by a fast-velocity initial phase and a
low-velocity final phase (Jeannerod, 1984), while in the non-biological
condition markers moved at constant velocity. This eye tracking study

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Biomedical and Specialty Surgical Sciences, University of Ferrara, via Fossato di Mortara 19, 44121 Ferrara, Italy.
E-mail address: crh@unife.it (L. Craighero).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104126
Received 9 May 2019; Received in revised form 3 November 2019; Accepted 4 November 2019
0010-0277/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
L. Craighero, et al.
showed that anticipatory eye movements were present only in the
biological motion PL display but not in the non-biological condition.
The authors concluded that adults are able to anticipate the goal of
others' actions, based exclusively on kinematic information from bio-
logical motion (Elsner et al., 2012). This anticipation induces a shift of
gaze and attention at the end of the observed movement while it is still
in progress.
It has been proposed that the origin of the proactive-gaze can derive
from the fact that movement translational components induce 2-day-
old newborns to allocate attention at the end of the observed move-
ment. The evidence of an attentional bias derives from a series of pre-
ferential looking experiments showing that, both during observation of
a real hand reaching movement (Craighero, Leo, Umiltà, & Simion,
2011), and during observation of a PL transformation of the hand
movement (Craighero, Lunghi, Leo, Ghirardi, & Simion, 2016), pre-
ferred orienting was present only when the two stimuli differed at the
end of the movement and not at the beginning of it. The possibility to
consider the shift of attention to the end of a movement trajectory as a
precursor of predictive gaze stems from results demonstrating that
mechanisms underlying oculomotor programming and those re-
sponsible for spatial attention share common structures (Corbetta,
1998; Nobre et al., 2000). Those results, support the premotor theory of
attention which maintains that spatial attention and programming of
eye movements are the same thing (Craighero, Carta, & Fadiga, 2001;
Craighero, Nascimben, & Fadiga, 2004; Craighero & Rizzolatti, 2005;
Rizzolatti, Riggio, Dascola, & Umiltà, 1987). Accordingly, it has been
proposed that during action execution this newborns' attention bias
may give origin to proactive-gaze, which in turn is able to shift the
fovea to the goal ahead of the hand during reaching movements,
seeking out online information necessary to correctly perform the
movement (Craighero, Lunghi, et al., 2016). Interestingly, however,
attention imbalance during motion observation was present in-
dependently of movement kinematics. That happened both when PL
display stimuli moved with natural accelerated-decelerated kinematics
and when they moved at constant velocity (Craighero, Lunghi, et al.,
2016).
In newborns the lack of different effects on the orientation of at-
tention attributable to the observed kinematics can derive from a yet
immature sensorimotor system. As a consequence, these would be an
inability to move with the typical velocity profile of goal-directed hand
actions present in adults. In effect, as already stated, the direct
matching hypothesis (Iacoboni, 1999; Rizzolatti et al., 2001; Rizzolatti
& Craighero, 2004) requires that the involvement of the motor system
during movement observation is dependent on action development.
Consequently, biological motion stimuli should recruit the motor
system in a specific way only if the observer has experience of the same
kinematics during action. However, already in uterus the hand moves
with accelerated and decelerated kinematics and, from the twenty-
second week of pregnancy, the unborn shows the ability to modulate
the velocity of the movement according to the nature of the target
(Castiello et al., 2010; Zoia et al., 2007, 2013). Therefore, the sensor-
imotor system of the newborn may have collected sufficient experience
to be specifically involved by biological movement observation.
Alternatively, the absence of differences in the effects exerted by the
two kinematics can be determined by the inability of the newborn to
discriminate the different visual stimuli. Only one single study speci-
fically investigated newborns ability to discriminate differences in ve-
locity (Méary, Kitromilides, Mazens, Graff, & Gentaz, 2007), and
showed that 4-day-old newborns discriminate single dots motions that
varied with respect to the “two-third-power law” of motion generation
and perception (Viviani & Terzuolo, 1982), moving according to a circle
or an ellipse path shape. The “two-third-power law” of motion states
that when the hand moves along a curved trajectory, the velocity is
proportional to a power of the local curvature. It has been proposed that
this law derives from biomechanics (Gribble & Ostry, 1996), or it may
be a by-product of oscillatory movement generators in joint space
2
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
(Schaal & Sternad, 2001).
While Méary et al. (2007) investigated the discrimination of single
dots velocities that varied with respect to the “two-third-power law”,
the present study was focused to investigate 2-day-old newborns ability
to discriminate differences in velocity of dots configurations when
motions varied with respect to the typical accelerated-decelerated ki-
nematics of goal-directed hand actions. During human reaching actions,
the relationship between velocity and position of the reaching object
depends on the central programming of multisegmental movements. It
shows features very similar to any aiming arm movement, regardless of
the distance of the object. The peak velocity of the movement is highly
correlated with its amplitude, although total movement duration re-
mains invariant when target distance changes. The low-velocity phase
consistently begins after about 75% of movement time has elapsed, and
this ratio is maintained for different movement amplitudes. Further-
more, this pattern for transportation is maintained regardless of whe-
ther visual feedback from the moving limb is present (Jeannerod,
1984).
In Experiment 1 and 2, we submitted 2-day-old newborns to an
infant-control preferential looking technique to investigate their ability
to discriminate a PL display moving with the typical accelerated-de-
celerated biological kinematics, from the same configuration of dots
moving along the same trajectory with the same movement duration
but at constant velocity.
The infant-control preferential looking technique is used in litera-
ture to test the spontaneous preferences shown by newborns. In it
newborns are simultaneously shown two different events. A significant
difference in total fixation time, and/or in number of orienting re-
sponses to the stimuli indicates that the baby has processed both events,
that he/she has discriminated the features that differentiate them, and
that he/she spontaneously prefers one of the two (Cohen, 1972).
Previous studies demonstrated in newborns that the global config-
uration of dots affected the analysis of individual dot trajectories
(Bardi, Regolin, & Simion, 2014). In addition, newborns show a spon-
taneous preference for dots configurations that change their global
shape during a translational movement with respect to configurations
that maintain their shape constant (Craighero, Lunghi, et al., 2016),
suggesting that the change in shape attracts newborns' attention. Con-
sequently, to test whether shape change interferes with the processing
of dots velocity, in Experiment 1 dots configurations changed their
global shape during the translational movement, while in Experiment 2
they maintained their global shape constant during the translational
movement.
Results showed no spontaneous preference for any of the two ve-
locities (i.e. constant vs accelerated-decelerated) either in Experiment 1
or in Experiment 2. The lack of preference might be attributable to
either the inability to discriminate visual stimuli that varied with re-
spect to the biological accelerated-decelerated kinematics, or to the
ability to discriminate them in the absence of a particular prior pre-
ference for either velocity. To investigate these possibilities,
Experiment 3 was carried out with an infant-control visual habituation
technique (Horowitz, Paden, Bhana, Aitchison, & Self, 1972). This
technique tests the presence of induced novelty preference, which oc-
curs only when infants can discriminate a familiar stimulus from a
novel one.
The habituation technique is based on the well documented evi-
dence that infants look longer at a novel stimulus than at a familiar one,
after having been habituated with prolonged presentations to the same
stimulus. Habituation can be measured as a decrease in fixation time to
the repeated presentation of the same stimulus (Fantz, 1964). Reduced
looking times are not due to fatigue but a sign that the infant has
processed the stimulus along one or more dimensions by forming a
representation of it (Sokolov, 1963), given that recovery happens when
the infant considers the comparison item novel (Cohen, 1972). In ha-
bituation paradigms infants are first familiarized to one item or cate-
gory reducing their interest in it. In the infant-control procedure the
L. Craighero, et al.
time of this habituation phase is not fixed (i.e., a fixed number of trials,
each of fixed length) but stimulus presentations continue until the in-
fant has reduced his/her looking time to a predetermined criterion.
After reaching this criterion, infants begin a test phase. The simplest
test involves comparing the looking time to the habituation stimulus
(now repeated again during test) vs. the looking time to a novel sti-
mulus. On the basis of Sokolov's (1963) classic comparator model the
presence of longer looking times to a novel stimulus, named novelty
preference, reflects the attentional bias toward the dimension of the
new stimulus differing from the represented stimulus experienced
during habituation (Colombo & Mitchell, 1990).
In Experiment 3, we submitted 2-day-old newborns to an infant-
control visual habituation technique. This was done to investigate
whether the repeated presentation of the translational movement of a
PL display maintaining its global shape facilitates newborns to process
and encode movement velocity. That in turn would allow newborns to
discriminate a PL display moving with the typical accelerated-de-
celerated biological kinematics, from the same dots configuration
moving along the same trajectory with the same movement duration
but at constant velocity.
2. Experiment 1
2.1. Materials and methods
2.1.1. Participants
It was planned to collect data from 14 newborns to analyze, that is
in the range of previous studies on preferential looking in newborns
(e.g., Bidet-Ildei, Kitromilides, Orliaguet, Pavlova, & Gentaz, 2013; Di
Giorgio et al., 2016; Di Giorgio, Leo, Pascalis, & Simion, 2012; Di
Giorgio, Lunghi, Simion, & Vallortigara, 2017; Leo & Simion, 2009;
Macchi Cassia, Valenza, Simion, & Leo, 2008; Mascalzoni, Regolin,
Vallortigara, & Simion, 2013; Simion, Regolin, & Bulf, 2008; Simion,
Valenza, Cassia, Turati, & Umilta, 2002; Turati, Simion, Milani, &
Umilta, 2002; where N ranges from 12 to 16, and where 13 of the 26
experiments reported have N = 12).
Fourteen full term newborns (5 males; mean age = 52 h; standard
deviation (SD) = 30.06; range = 13–115 h) recruited from the mater-
nity ward of the Pediatric Clinic of the University of Padova took part in
the study. All of them met the screening criteria of normal delivery, had
a birth weight between 2730 and 3820 g (mean(weight) = 3298.21 g;
SD = 377.10) and an Apgar score between 9 and 10 at 5 min. Data from
7 additional newborns were discarded because they changed their state
during testing (they start crying or become too tired, n = 2), or because
of position bias (they looked in one direction > 80% of the time,
n = 2), or because of technical problems during testing (n = 3).
Newborns were tested if awake and in alert state (Prechtl & O'Brien,
1982), and after their parents had provided informed consent. All ex-
perimental procedures were approved by the Ethical Committee of the
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology of the University
of Padova (Protocol number 19147).
2.1.2. Stimuli and procedure
Stimuli consisted of two PL display videos, duration 3.6 s (90
frames; 25 FPS), played in a loop, and contemporarily presented on a
computer screen. Each stimulus covered an area of 22 (42° of visual
angle) × 24.2 cm (46.2° of visual angle) and was presented on the left
or on the right of the display monitor. The distance between the two
stimuli was 8 cm (15.3° of visual angle).
The stimuli were obtained by the graphic manipulation of the video
of a real hand reaching to grasp a ball. The outline of the hand was
drawn using 44 black dots (each dot with a diameter of 0.04°).
Subsequently, the original video was removed leaving only the dots on
a white background. The stimulus obtained (Original velocity stimulus)
maintained the typical biological kinematics of hand reaching.
Specifically, the dots started to move at frame 25 and gradually reached
3
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
the maximum velocity of 15 pixels/frame at frame 38 and then pro-
gressively decelerated until stopped at frame 65. A further graphic
manipulation based on 2D space interpolation transformed this biolo-
gical accelerated-decelerated kinematics into a constant velocity
movement, maintaining, however, the same trajectory and the same
movement duration of the dots as the original video (Constant velocity
stimulus). In this stimulus, the dots started to move at frame 25 sud-
denly reaching a velocity of 8 pixel/frame and they maintained this
velocity until frame 64 then they stopped at frame 65 (for more tech-
nical details see Craighero, Jacono, & Mele, 2016; Craighero, Lunghi,
et al., 2016).
A preferential looking technique with an infant-control procedure
was employed. This visual technique is used to test the spontaneous
preferences by presenting contemporarily two different events and re-
cording off-line the following measures for each of the two events: the
total number of orienting responses, the total fixation time as the sum of
each single fixation, the duration of the first fixation, and the duration
of the longest fixation. In accordance with Cohen (1972), we assumed
that the number of orienting responses indexed an orienting me-
chanism, while the total fixation time as well as the duration of the first
fixation, and of the longest fixation indexed a detection mechanism.
The presence of a statistically significant difference between the two
events indicates that the baby had coded both events and he/she had
preferred spontaneously one of the two (Cohen, 1972). A video camera
recorded participants' eye movements to monitor their looking behavior
on-line and to allow off-line coding of their fixations. During the ex-
periment, to perform the infant-control procedure, images were re-
transmitted on a video monitor that allowed the experimenter to stop
the trial when the infant shifted his/her gaze away from the display
for > 10 s. The images showed only the eyes of the infants and not the
animations being presented to the newborns, therefore the experi-
menter responsible of the trials sequence and the off-line coders were
naive concerning the nature of the stimuli observed by the newborns.
Stimuli were presented on an Apple LED Cinema Display (Flat Panel
30″) computer monitor (refresh rate = 60 Hz, 2560 × 1600), and a
video camera was placed above it to record eye movements in order to
control newborns' looking behavior online and to allow offline coding
of their fixations. Two experimenters were present, one holding the
baby in front of the screen, and the other commanding the start of the
experimental sessions. The experimenter holding the baby was naïve to
the tested hypothesis and was instructed to fix her/his gaze on a
monitor located on the ceiling throughout the experimental session to
check if the position of the baby was aligned with the center of the
screen.
The baby sat on the experimenter's lap at a distance of approxi-
mately 30 cm from the screen and white curtains were drawn on both
sides of the newborn to prevent interference from irrelevant distractors.
Each infant was submitted to two test trials (Trial 1 and Trial 2) dif-
fering for the position of the stimuli, the position being reversed from
Trial 1 to Trial 2. The initial side of the two stimuli (left or right) was
counterbalanced across participants. Each stimulus was specularly
shown according to its position on the right or on the left of the screen
in the trial, to make the movement of each stimulus start from the
center of the screen and avoid possible movement direction biases
(Fig. 1; Video 1).
At the beginning of each test trial, a red disc on a black background
appeared to attract the infant's gaze to the center of the monitor. In a
continuous fashion, the disk changed in size from small (dia-
meter = 1.8 cm) to large (diameter = 2.5 cm) and vice versa, until the
newborn's gaze was properly aligned with it. When the newborn's gaze
was on the red disk, the experimenter pressed a keyboard key that
automatically turned off the disc and activated the onset of the stimuli,
thereby initiating Trial 1. The stimuli were played in a loop as long as
the infant fixated one of them (i.e., infant control procedure). When the
infant shifted his/her gaze away from the display for > 10 s, the stimuli
were removed and the disc was turned on to start Trial 2. The
L. Craighero, et al.
Fig. 1. Example of the stimuli used in Experiment 1. The first, an intermediate, and the last frame of the PL display videos played in a loop are shown. The example
shows the Original velocity stimulus on the left and the Constant velocity stimulus on the right.
experiment finished when the infant shifted his/her gaze away from the
display for > 10 s during Trial 2.
Videotapes of the newborn's eye movements were coded offline
frame by frame by two different observers, unaware of the stimuli
presented. The duration of the events was based on the number of
frames subsequently transformed into milliseconds (1 frame = 40 ms).
2.2. Results
The mean estimated reliability between offline coding of newborns'
looking behavior executed by the two independent observers on the
whole sample was Pearson's r = 0.98, p < .001. Inter-observer relia-
bility was high enough as to allow us to submit the data to statistical
analysis.
To establish whether the newborns showed a spontaneous visual
preference for one of the two stimuli the total number of orienting re-
sponses, the total fixation time as the sum of each single fixation, the
duration of the first fixation in Trial 1, and the duration of the longest
fixation among Trial 1 and Trial 2 were calculated for Original velocity
stimulus and for Constant velocity stimulus for each participant and
were submitted to separate two-tailed dependent samples t-tests.
For the total number of orienting responses the comparison was not
significant: newborns did not orient more frequently to Original velo-
city stimulus (mean = 14.9, SD = 5.5) compared to Constant velocity
stimulus (mean = 15.9, SD = 5.6), t(13) = −0.698, p = .498, ns,
Cohen's d = 0.18.
For the total fixation time the comparison was not significant:
newborns did not look significantly more to Original velocity stimulus
(mean = 42,346 ms, SD = 19,497) compared to Constant velocity sti-
mulus (mean = 46,028 ms, SD = 17,179), t(13) = −0.734, p = .476, ns
Cohen's d = 0.20.
Also for the duration of the first fixation in Trial 1 (Original velocity
stimulus: mean = 3429 ms, SD = 2674; Constant velocity stimulus:
mean = 3163 ms, SD = 2240; t(13) = 0.249, p = .807, ns), and for the
4
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
duration of the longest fixation among Trial 1 and Trial 2 (Original
velocity stimulus: mean = 8626 ms, SD = 4461; Constant velocity sti-
mulus: mean = 8551 ms, SD = 3511; t(13) = 0.064, p = .949, ns,
Cohen's d = 0.02) the comparisons were not significant.
As a conclusive analysis we transformed the total fixation time
(TFT) toward the Original velocity stimulus as a percentage of the total
fixation time spent in looking at both stimuli (TFT Original/TFT
Original + TFT Constant) and compared this percentage to the chance
level. The percentage of total fixation time newborns spent looking at
the Original velocity stimulus did not reach the significance above
chance level of 50% (mean = 47.7%, SD = 13.4), t(13) = −0.646,
p = .529, ns, Cohen's d = 0.18.
Data for the Experiment 1 are available as Supplementary material
(Raw data Experiment 1).
3. Experiment 2
In Experiment 1 we investigated whether newborns are able to
discriminate the velocity of PL displays when the global configuration
of the stimuli changed during the translational movement. We found no
spontaneous preference for velocity type in accordance with the pos-
sibility that shape change could interfere with the processing of the
local kinematics, as suggested by the findings showing that the global
configuration has an effect on the perception of biological kinematics in
newborns (Bardi et al., 2014), and the fact that newborns show a
spontaneous preference for stimuli that change global configuration
during translational movement (Craighero, Lunghi, et al., 2016).
To verify whether in the absence of shape change newborns dis-
criminate PL display stimuli moving with natural accelerated-de-
celerated kinematics from stimuli moving at constant velocity, in
Experiment 2 we used the same experimental procedure of Experiment
1 but the stimuli maintained constant their global configuration during
the translational movement.
L. Craighero, et al.
3.1. Materials and methods
3.1.1. Participants
Fourteen full term newborns (5 males; mean age = 46 h;
SD = 18.89; range = 12–65 h) recruited from the maternity ward of the
Pediatric Clinic of the University of Padova took part to the study. All of
them met the screening criteria of normal delivery, had a birth weight
between 2375 and 3670 g (mean(weight) = 3124.64 g; SD = 432.23) and
an Apgar score of 10 at 5 min. Data from 2 additional newborns were
discarded because they changed their state during testing (they start
crying or become too tired). Newborns were tested if awake and in alert
state (Prechtl & O'Brien, 1982), and after their parents had provided
informed consent. All experimental procedures were approved by the
Ethical Committee of the Department of Developmental and Social
Psychology of the University of Padova (Protocol number 19147).
3.1.2. Stimuli and procedure
The apparatus and the procedure were identical to those used in
Experiment 1. The stimuli were obtained by the graphic manipulation
of the video of a real hand that reached the same ball, placed at the
same position of the video used in Experiment 1, but while in
Experiment 1 the hand started in a pinch shape and subsequently
grasped the ball with a natural hand shaping during the reaching phase,
in Experiment 2 the hand reached the ball by maintaining the initial
pinch shape both during the reaching phase and during the landing
onto the superior part of the object.
The video was submitted to the same graphic manipulation de-
scribed in Experiment 1 by which the outline of the hand was drawn
using 44 black dots, and the final stimulus consisted in the moving dots
on a white background. A further graphic manipulation transformed the
Original velocity stimulus moving with the biological accelerated-de-
celerated kinematics into the Constant velocity stimulus moving at
constant velocity, maintaining, however, the same trajectory and the
Fig. 2. Example of the stimuli used in Experiment 2. The first, an intermediate, and the last frame of the PL display videos played in a loop are shown. The example
shows the Original velocity stimulus on the left and the Constant velocity stimulus on the right.
5
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
same movement duration of the dots in the original video (for more
technical details refer to (Craighero, Jacono, & Mele, 2016; Craighero,
Lunghi, et al., 2016).
As in Experiment 1, the stimuli consisted of two PL display videos,
duration 3.6 s (90 frames; 25 FPS). Each stimulus covered an area of 22
(42° of visual angle) × 24.2 cm (46.2° of visual angle) and was pre-
sented on the left or on the right of the display monitor. The distance
between the two stimuli was 8 cm (15.3° of visual angle). Each stimulus
was specularly shown according to its position on the right or on the left
of the screen in the trial, to make the movement of each stimulus start
from the center of the screen and avoid possible movement direction
biases (Fig. 2; Video 2).
Newborns were submitted to a preferential looking technique with
an infant-control procedure during which Original velocity stimulus
and Constant velocity stimulus, played in a loop, were contemporarily
presented on a computer screen with the same procedure used in
Experiment 1.
3.2. Results
The mean estimated reliability between offline coding of newborns'
looking behavior executed by the two independent observers on the
whole sample was Pearson's r = 0.91, p < .001. Inter-observer relia-
bility was high enough to allow us to submit the data to statistical
analysis.
As in Experiment 1, to establish whether the newborns showed a
spontaneous visual preference for one of the two stimuli, the total
number of orienting responses, the total fixation time as the sum of each
single fixation, the duration of the first fixation in Trial 1, and the
duration of the longest fixation among Trial 1 and Trial 2 were calcu-
lated for Original velocity stimulus and for Constant velocity stimulus
for each participant and were submitted to separate two-tailed depen-
dent samples t-tests.
L. Craighero, et al. Cognition 195 (2020) 104126

Fig. 3. Example of the stimuli used in the Test Phase in Experiment 3. The first, an intermediate, and the last frame of the PL display videos played in a loop are
shown. The example shows the Original velocity stimulus on the left and the Constant velocity stimulus on the right, moving toward the right side of the monitor.

For the total number of orienting responses the comparison was not varied with respect to the biological kinematics, or the capacity to
significant: newborns did not orient more frequently to Original velo- discriminate them but the absence of a particular prior preference for
city stimulus (mean = 20.3, SD = 8.8) compared to Constant velocity either velocity, in Experiment 3 we used an infant-control visual ha-
stimulus (mean = 19.7, SD = 4.7), t(13) = 0.301, p = .768, ns, Cohen's bituation technique (Horowitz et al., 1972) that manipulates pre-
d = 0.08. ferences by familiarizing infants to one of the two stimuli. Habituation
For the total fixation time the comparison was not significant: determines reduced looking time for the familiar stimulus with respect
newborns did not look significantly more to Original velocity stimulus to the novel one. Obviously, a difference in looking time is present only
(mean = 61,563 ms, SD = 28,233) compared to Constant velocity sti- when the familiar and the novel stimuli are discriminated.
mulus (mean = 59,464 ms, SD = 18,725), t(13) = 0.218, p = .830, ns,
Cohen's d = 0.09.
4.1. Materials and methods
Also for the duration of the first fixation in Trial 1 (Original velocity
stimulus: mean = 1851 ms, SD = 1096; Constant velocity stimulus:
4.1.1. Participants
mean = 3019 ms, SD = 2236; t(13) = 1.624, p = .128, ns), and for the
Twenty-four full term newborns (7 males; mean age = 31 h;
duration of the longest fixation among Trial 1 and Trial 2 (Original
SD = 17; range = 5–65 h) recruited from the maternity ward of the
velocity stimulus: mean = 10,094 ms, SD = 3466; Constant velocity
Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria of Ferrara took part to the study. All
stimulus: mean = 10,993 ms, SD = 6459; t(13) = −0.471, p = .645, ns,
of them met the screening criteria of normal delivery, had a birth
Cohen's d = 0.17) the comparisons were not significant.
weight between 2515 and 4030 g (mean(weight) = 3434.38 g;
Finally, also the percentage of total fixation time newborns spent
SD = 394.24) and an Apgar score between 9 and 10 at 5 min.
looking at the Original velocity stimulus did not reach the significance
Additional 36 infants were tested, but were not included in the final
above chance level of 50% (mean = 49.4%, SD = 13), t(13) = −0.151,
sample because 8 changed their state during testing, 8 did not accu-
p = .882, ns, Cohen's d = 0.04.
mulate enough fixations during the test phase, 7 were discarded due to
Data for the Experiment 2 are available as Supplementary material
a poor video recording and 13 showed a strong position preference
(Raw data Experiment 2).
(during the test they looked > 80% of the time at one direction).
Newborns were tested if awake and in alert state (Prechtl & O'Brien,
1982), and after their parents had provided informed consent. The
4. Experiment 3
provincial Ethical Committee of Ferrara licensed all experimental pro-
cedures (protocol number 87-2013).
In Experiment 2 we investigated whether newborns are able to
Twelve participants were randomly assigned to the group in which
discriminate the velocity of PL display stimuli moving with natural
during the Habituation phase the Original velocity stimulus was pre-
accelerated-decelerated kinematics from stimuli moving at constant
sented, and twelve to the group in which the Constant velocity stimulus
velocity when the stimuli maintained constant their global configura-
was presented.
tion during the translational movement. We found no spontaneous
preference for velocity type.
To investigate whether null results in Experiment 1 and in 4.1.2. Stimuli and procedure
Experiment 2 indicate the inability to discriminate visual stimuli that Stimuli consisted of the same two PL display videos used in

6
L. Craighero, et al.
Experiment 2, specifically, one stimulus moving with natural ac-
celerated-decelerated kinematics (Original velocity stimulus) and one
moving at constant velocity (Constant velocity stimulus). The two sti-
muli had the same shape that was maintained constant during the
translational movement, and moved along the same trajectory with the
same movement duration (Fig. 3, Video 3).
Stimuli were presented on a 27.0 in. Asus monitor
(1920 × 1080 pixels resolution and with a refresh rate of 60 Hz) placed
at a distance of 30 cm from the infant and tilted forward 40° as well as
the infant chair. Each stimulus covered an area of 14.3 (27.3° of visual
angle) × 16.1 (30.8° of visual angle) cm and was presented on the right
or on the left side of the display monitor. The distance between the two
stimuli's areas was 5 cm (9.6° of visual angle).
An infant-control visual habituation technique was employed. The
procedure included a Habituation phase preceding two consecutive Test
phases (Test 1 and Test 2). Each phase started once the baby's eyes were
attracted at the center of the monitor by means of a throbbing white
square (i.e., attention getter). In the Habituation phase half of the
newborns were presented with the Original velocity stimulus and the
other half with the Constant velocity stimulus. During the Habituation
phase the same stimulus was presented on both the right and the left
side of the monitor and the duration of individual fixations was re-
corded irrespective of the side of presentation. Bilateral, rather than
central, presentation was employed as photoreceptors in the central
fovea at birth are very immature, resulting in poor vision in the central
visual field (Atkinson & Braddick, 1989). The Habituation phase ended
once the newborn had reached the habituation criterion, namely when,
from the fourth fixation on, the sum of any three consecutive fixations
was 50% or less than the total of the first three fixations (see Cohen &
Gelber, 1975).
During each test phase, each baby was given a paired presentation
of the test stimuli, one of these being identical to the familiar stimulus
already presented in the Habituation phase (e.g. the Original velocity
stimulus), the other being novel (e.g. the Constant velocity stimulus).
Right–left position of the stimuli was reversed from Test 1 to Test 2. The
initial position was counterbalanced across subjects. Each test phase
lasted until a total of 20 s of looking time had been accumulated (Slater,
Morison, & Rose, 1983).
In order to avoid confounds between the direction of the movement
and the velocity of the movement, both stimuli maintained the same
direction of movement both in the Habituation phase and in the Test
phases. The direction of the movement (stimuli moving toward the
right side of the monitor or toward the left side of the monitor) was
7
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
Fig. 4. The pictures show the experimental setup. On
the left, the newborn placed in the infant chair tilted
in a semi-upright position (40°), the monitor placed
at a distance of 30 cm from the newborn and tilted
forward 40° as well as the infant chair, and the video
camera located above the monitor to record new-
born's eye movements. On the right, the experi-
menter codes on-line fixations by observing the
output of the video camera projected on the video
monitor placed on the wall.
counterbalanced across subjects. Before submitting data to statistical
analyses we checked if the shorter distance of the starting position of a
stimulus with respect to the attention getter (for example, in Fig. 3 the
stimulus on the right starts from a position closer to the attention getter
than the stimulus on the left) had influenced gaze behavior inducing an
anchorage of the gaze on the closer stimulus (i.e., the stimulus on the
right of Fig. 3) and the results showed no differences between the two
stimuli positions both in the Habituation and in the Test phases (all
ps > 0,05).
Testing sessions were subsequently coded off-line by two in-
dependent observer, unaware of the order of stimuli presentation, and
each fixation was preserved only if noticed by both observers. The mean
estimate percentage of fixations preserved was 80% among all the
participants.
Newborns were observed in a quiet room where their mother had
previously brought them. Each newborn was positioned in a semi-up-
right position (40°) in a newborn chair, where the baby's head was well
supported. The chair was placed on a small table. To prevent inter-
ference from irrelevant distractors, peripheral vision was limited by two
black panels placed on both sides of the infant. The room was dimly
lighted by a floor lamp located behind the newborn chair. A video
camera, located above the monitor, recorded participants' eye move-
ments to monitor their looking behavior on-line and to allow off-line
coding of their fixations. Images were retransmitted on a video monitor
that allowed the experimenter to code the duration of fixations by
means of two joysticks (one in the right hand for fixations directed to
the left side of the screen and the other in the left hand for fixations
directed to the right side) (Fig. 4).
4.2. Results
To investigate whether a difference to reach the habituation cri-
terion was present between the Original velocity stimulus and the
Constant velocity stimulus, for each participant and for each group
(habituated to the Original velocity stimulus vs habituated to the
Constant velocity stimulus) we calculated the total fixation time during
the Habituation phase, and we submitted results to a two-tailed in-
dependent samples t-test. The statistical comparison revealed no sig-
nificant differences (Original velocity stimulus: mean = 65,519 ms,
SD = 30.323; Constant velocity stimulus: mean = 75,344 ms,
SD = 35.981; t(22) = −0.723, p = .477, ns).
To investigate if the repeated presentation of the stimulus during
the Habituation phase induced in the two test trials a novelty
L. Craighero, et al.
preference, consequently suggesting that infants can discriminate the
familiar stimulus to which they have been habituated from the novel
one, for each participant and for each group we calculated the total
fixation time as the sum of each individual fixation for the familiar and
the novel stimulus, and results were submitted to a repeated-measures
analysis of variance (ANOVA), with Habituation group (Original velo-
city vs. Constant velocity) as between-subjects factor and Familiarity
(Familiar vs. Novel) as within-subjects factor. The main factor
Habituation group was not significant, F(1,22) = 1.83, p = .189,
η2p = 0.076, indicating that the stimulus kinematics that newborns have
been familiarized with did not influence the total fixation time.
Surprisingly, even the main factor Familiarity was not significant, F
(1,22) = 1.21, p = .283, η2p = 0.052, indicating that newborns did not
look longer at the novel than at the familiar stimuli. However, the in-
teraction Habituation group × Familiarity reached significance, F
(1,22) = 14.36, p = .001, η2p = 0.395. Post-hoc comparisons performed
with Bonferroni test revealed that newborns habituated to the Original
velocity did not manifest any stimulus preference (total fixation time
for Original velocity stimulus: mean 23,877 ms, SD = 62.05; total
fixation time for Constant velocity stimulus: mean 17,635 ms,
SD = 56.30; p = .42). In contrast, newborns habituated to the Constant
velocity looked longer at the novel stimulus (total fixation time for
Original velocity stimulus: mean 26,827 ms, SD = 59.71; total fixation
time for Constant velocity stimulus: mean 15,477 ms, SD = 50.52;
p = .013). Furthermore, the familiar stimulus was looked longer by
infants habituated to the Original velocity (total fixation time for
Original velocity stimulus: mean 23,877 ms, SD = 62.05; total fixation
time for Constant velocity stimulus: mean 15,477 s, SD = 50.52;
p = .009), and the Novel stimulus was looked longer by infants habi-
tuated to the Constant velocity (total fixation time for Original velocity
stimulus: mean 26,827 ms, SD = 59.71; total fixation time for Constant
velocity stimulus: mean 17,635 ms, SD = 56.30; p = .004) (Fig. 5).
Data for the Experiment 3 are available as Supplementary material
(Raw data Experiment 3).
5. Discussion
To test whether the absence of any spontaneous preference in
Experiment 1 and 2 is attributable to either the inability of 2-day-old
newborns to discriminate visual stimuli that varied with respect to the
biological accelerated-decelerated kinematics, or, in the presence of this
capacity, to the lack of a preference for either velocity, Experiment 3
was carried out. It tested induced novelty preference, possible only in a
condition where infants can discriminate the familiar stimulus from the
novel one. Results showed that infants familiarized with the constant
Fig. 5. The significant interaction Habituation group × Familiarity for total
fixation time obtained in Experiment 3. Ordinates are in seconds. Whiskers
indicate standard error of means. Newborns habituated to the Original velocity
did not manifest any stimulus preference. In contrast, newborns habituated to
the Constant velocity looked longer at the novel stimulus. Asterisks indicate
statistically significant comparisons.
8
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
velocity stimulus (i.e., PL display moving at constant velocity) preferred
the display maintaining the typical biological kinematics of hand
reaching (i.e. original velocity). In contrast infants familiarized with
original velocity did not prefer the new stimulus with a constant ve-
locity.
One possible explanation of this preference for original velocity
refers to studies showing that very young infants (Wetherford & Cohen,
1973) but also older infants prefer to look at a stimulus they have only
partially encoded, specifically when exposure to the stimulus was re-
latively brief (Hunter, Ross, & Ames, 1982; Rose, Gottfried, Mello-
Carmina, & Bridger, 1982; Wagner & Sakovits, 1986). The preference
might simply be a consequence of the fact that whereas the simpler
constant-movement stimulus was fully encoded, encoding was only
partial for the more complex biological-motion stimulus. However, this
possibility is unlikely given that an infant-control preferential looking
technique was employed, in which the time of habituation phase is not
fixed but stimulus presentations continue until the infant has reduced
his/her looking time to a predetermined criterion. Moreover, statistical
analysis indicated no difference in reaching the habituation criterion
for the original velocity stimulus and the constant velocity one.
Generally, in literature a preference asymmetry is explained as at-
tributable to the presence of a spontaneous preference for the novel
stimulus (see Oakes, 2010). In the present study, the novel preferred
stimulus moved according with the biological accelerated-decelerated
kinematics, and a spontaneous preference for it would work in accord
with any novel-category preference for original velocity after famil-
iarization with the constant one and thus produce a robust novel-ca-
tegory preference. However, a spontaneous preference for original over
constant velocity would work against any novel-category preference for
constant velocity after familiarization with original velocity. In this
case, the two competing preferences would cancel each other out, and
thus produce a null result. A similar preference asymmetry was re-
ported by Quinn and colleagues (Quinn, Yahr, Kuhn, Slater, & Pascalis,
2002) investigating gender categorization of female versus male faces
by infants aged 3 to 4 months. Their findings indicated that infants
reared with a female primary caregiver prefer female over male faces, a
preference that is strong enough to block a novel-category preference
for male faces after familiarization with female faces. Authors' inter-
pretation was confirmed by the results of a preferential looking control
experiment showing statistically longer looking times for female faces
than for male ones, which revealed the presence of a spontaneous
preference for female faces.
In contrast, the findings of the current experiments, taken together,
indicate the absence of spontaneous preference for the biological ac-
celerated-decelerated kinematics (Experiment 1 and 2) which can be
acquired after repeated exposure to it (Experiment 3), blocking a novel-
category preference for constant velocity stimulus. This acquired pre-
ference is also evident when considering that the original velocity sti-
mulus was looked longer than the constant one regardless of whether it
belonged to the novel or familiar category. Infants habituated to the
original velocity looked longer at the familiar stimulus, while infants
habituated to the constant velocity looked longer at the novel stimulus.
We have already pointed out that two are the different biological
kinematics considered in the literature. The first, and best known one,
refers to the “two-third-power law” of motion generation and percep-
tion (Viviani & Terzuolo, 1982). It defines the dynamic regularities that
reflect the structure and the control schemes of the musculo-skeletal
system, and it is explained by the rules of biomechanics (Gribble &
Ostry, 1996). The second one, tested in the present study, concerns the
typical accelerated-decelerated kinematics of goal-directed hand ac-
tions and depends on the central programming of the link between
velocity of the hand and position of the reaching object (Jeannerod,
1984). Méary et al. (2007) showed that 4-day-old newborns submitted
to a standard preferential looking paradigm, looked longer at single
dots motion violating the two-third-power law, than at single dots
motion conforming to it. Authors interpreted these results within the
L. Craighero, et al.
“violation of expectation” framework. That is, non-biological motion
may have violated newborns' prior expectations about the dynamics of
physical events relative to the two-third-power law. They proposed that
this effect may either depend on “downstream” neurofunctional con-
straints at the level of motion-sensitive areas in the visual system, or on
a motor-perceptual mapping. This latter possibility arises because the
two-third-power law has been associated with studies of sensorimotor
interactions proposing that implicit motor knowledge could be used by
the visual system to interpret dynamic events (Viviani & Stucchi, 1992).
Unlike what was shown by Méary et al. (2007) for the two-third-power
law, newborns don't show prior expectations about the dynamics of
physical events relative to the accelerated-decelerated kinematics. That
is supported by the absence in the present preferential looking experi-
ments of any preference for either a motion conforming to it or a mo-
tion violating it. The presence of different results relative to the two-
third-power law and the accelerated-decelerated kinematics suggests a
different processing of the visual cues referring to the control schemes
of the musculo-skeletal system and those referring to the central pro-
gramming of goal-directed actions in infancy.
One possible explanation for the absence of prior expectations about
accelerated-decelerated kinematics relates to the poor visual experience
of goal-directed actions that newborns have in their first days of life.
This may lead to the impossibility already to have generated a motor-
perceptual mapping, and the consequent inability to use the implicit
sensorimotor knowledge related to the kinematics of proto-intentional
actions developed in uterus (Zoia et al., 2007) to interpret the dynamics
of visual events. This hypothesis finds support in the results of Ex-
periment 3, revealing that, after the repeated visual presentation of a
stimulus moving with accelerated-decelerated kinematics, newborns
show preference for it. This preference is not explained by the “viola-
tion of expectation” hypothesis, which predicts longer looking times for
the non-biological motion, and fits well with the possibility that the
visual exposure allows infants to generate a motor-visual mapping and
consequently recognize and prefer the dynamics of physical events that
are more familiar to them.
6. Conclusions
By concluding, the overall findings show that 2-day-old newborns
can discriminate dots configurations of the same shape, moving along
the same trajectory with the same movement duration but with a ve-
locity that varies with respect to the biological accelerated-decelerated
kinematics. However, this ability arises only after the repeated visual
presentation of different kinematics, and manifests itself as a preference
for the biological motion, suggesting a fast plasticity of the sensor-
imotor system in linking an already acquired motor knowledge with a
newly experienced congruent visual stimulation. These results indicate
the need to rephrase the direct matching hypothesis (Iacoboni, 1999;
Rizzolatti et al., 2001; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004) and indicate that
the relationship between perception and action does not require only
action development but also the accumulation of sufficient perceptual
experience. A further example of the need of a perceptual training for
the development of cross-modal identity is evident in the visual-haptic
mapping. It shows that congenitally blind adults who gain sight initially
fail to identify seen objects with their felt versions, however, they
succeed in doing so after a few days of sight, index of a rapid learning
and sign of a fast plasticity of the mapping process (Held, 2009; Held,
Ostrovsky, deGelder, & Sinha, 2010).
Finally, it would be interesting to explore whether the repeated
visual presentation of biological kinematics influences newborns' at-
tention imbalance during translational movement observation
(Craighero, Lunghi, et al., 2016). The newly developed mapping be-
tween motor and visual kinematics may limit the effect to the vision of
stimuli moving with biological motion, as well as the proactive gaze in
adults is present only during observation of PL markers moving with the
typical velocity profile of human goal-directed hand actions and not
9
Cognition 195 (2020) 104126
when moving at constant velocity (Elsner et al., 2012).
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104126.
Acknowledgement
First of all the authors would like to thank the babies who took part
in the study and their parents.
The authors are deeply indebted to the staff of the maternity ward of
the Pediatric Clinic of the University of Padova and to the staff of the
maternity ward of the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria of Ferrara.
In particular, in Padova, we thank Prof. Eugenio Baraldi, Director of
the Intensive Care Unit and Prof. Giorgio Perilongo Director of the
Department of Women and Child Health for their collaboration. A
special thanks to Dr. Beatrice Dalla Barba and to the nursing staff of the
Pediatric Clinic (Azienda Ospedaliera).
In Ferrara, we thank Prof. Caterina Borgna, Dr. Elisa Ballardini, and
Dr. Silvia Fanaro. A special thanks to Dr. Monica Garuti and to the
nursing staff of the Rooming-in of the Azienda Ospedaliero-
Universitaria of Ferrara.
Finally we thank the reviewers and Carlo Umiltà for their helpful
comments and suggestions on a previous version of the paper.
The research was supported by Ministero dell'Istruzione
dell'Università e della Ricerca, MIUR, Programmi di Ricerca Scientifica
di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN): PRIN 2015 Prot. 20152M5A5J
to F. S., and PRIN 2010-2011 Prot. 2010XPMFW4_002 to L. C.
Declaration of competing interest
None.
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