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Updated: Oct 20, 2025

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task
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Children do not distinguish efficient from inefficient actions during observation.

Ori Ossmy1, Danyang Han2, Brianna E Kaplan2

  • 1Department of Psychology, Center for Neural Science, New York University, 6 Washington Place, Room 403, New York, NY, 10003, USA. oo8@nyu.edu.

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Children’s motor skills impact their ability to recognize efficient actions in others. Even when observing tool use, preschoolers struggled to differentiate efficient from inefficient actions, unlike adults.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Observational learning is crucial for acquiring efficient actions.
  • The influence of an observer's motor proficiency on their ability to assess others' action efficiency is not well understood.
  • Preschoolers exhibit motor limitations, particularly in complex multi-step actions like tool grasping.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of observer motor skill in perceiving action efficiency.
  • To compare how preschoolers and adults visually and neurally process efficient versus inefficient tool use.

Main Methods:

  • Preschoolers (N=22) and adults (N=22) observed videos of efficient and inefficient tool use.
  • Eye-tracking monitored visual attention, particularly to tool grasping actions.
  • Deep learning analyzed eye gaze patterns; pupil dilation and neural activity (mu frequency oscillations) were measured.

Main Results:

  • Adults, unlike preschoolers, focused more on the tool grasp and their eye gaze distinguished efficient from inefficient actions.
  • Adults exhibited distinct physiological responses (pupil dilation, neural activity) to efficient vs. inefficient grasps, while children did not.
  • Children observed actions without discerning the efficiency of initial steps, suggesting a lack of motor-based perception.

Conclusions:

  • Observer's own motor efficiency is a critical factor in perceiving the efficiency of observed actions.
  • Developing motor skills are necessary for children to effectively evaluate the efficiency of others' actions.
  • This study highlights a link between motor competence and the ability to learn from observing others.