DeLTA Center Colloquium - Dr. Jeff Lockman "Learning about the body: From self-reaching to self-recognition"

Abstract:  What does it mean to know one’s body?  In this talk, I focus on the development of functional reaching maps of the body:  how infants learn to localize and reach to stimuli on the surface of body, regardless of the position of the hand in space or that of the target on the body.   Using a new task of tactile localization suitable for use with infants, I will describe work on the development of body reaching during the first year, and how this sensorimotor ability serves as an intermodal gateway to other forms of body knowledge, including mirror self-recognition.