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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 1, 2025

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

The link between number and action in human infants.

Gisella Decarli^1,2, Ludovica Veggiotti^1,2, Maria Dolores de Hevia^3,4

¹Université de Paris, INCC UMR 8002, CNRS, 75006, Paris, France.

Scientific Reports

|March 2, 2022

Summary

Infants as young as 7-9 months can link numerical concepts with actions. This study reveals an early, preverbal connection between number and action in the developing human mind.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Neuroscience
Developmental Psychology

Background:

The parietal cortex supports numerical abilities and is linked to spatial and motor functions.
While number-spatial links are known, the number-action connection in early development is less understood.
Adult studies show interference between numerical and action processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the origins of the number-action link in infants.
To determine if infants associate numerical magnitude with action-related information.
To explore the existence of an early, preverbal number-action association.

Main Methods:

Habituation paradigm with 7- to 9-month-old infants.
Two groups: one habituated to congruent number-hand pairings, the other to incongruent pairings.
Test trials presented both congruent and incongruent pairings to assess looking time.

Main Results:

Infants habituated to congruent pairings showed significantly longer looking times for incongruent pairings.
This indicates infants detected the mismatch between number and action.
No significant looking time difference was observed in infants habituated to incongruent pairings.

Conclusions:

Infants spontaneously associate magnitude changes across number and action dimensions.
Findings support an early, preverbal link between number and action in the human mind.
This early association may be foundational for later numerical and motor development.