Effects of active and observational experience on EEG activity during early childhood

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Abstract
While it is accepted that action experience facilitates action understanding, it is debated whether first‐hand motor and visual experience differentially influence this ability. Action understanding relies on relatively broad cortical activity, including that of the neural mirroring and visual attention systems. Infant and adult research has demonstrated that prior motor and visual experience have distinct effects on cortical activity during action perception, though this has yet to be investigated in young children. We used a within‐subject design and an at‐home training paradigm to manipulate 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds’ experience with two relatively novel actions. On Days 1–4, children received brief active training with one tool (i.e., motor experience) and observational training with the other tool (i.e., visual experience: video of a demonstrator modeling the action). On Day 5, we measured children’s EEG mu/alpha (8–10 Hz) and beta rhythm (16–20 Hz) activity during observation and execution of these actions in the laboratory. Although central‐parietal mu and beta rhythm activity did not differ as a function of training condition, desynchronization of the occipital alpha rhythm was greater during perception of the active training task than of the observational training task. Our findings suggest that, during early childhood, action experience may modulate visual attention during subsequent action perception. Further, children exhibited neural mirroring—central‐parietal desynchronization during both tool‐use action observation and execution—within the mu rhythm, but not the beta rhythm. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the broad cortical activity that supports action perception during this period.

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