FIRB/Understanding the other in movement

Project objectives

The project 'The Other Understanding in Movement' (TOUM) has the main objective of analyzing motor behavior during gestures, in children with typical development (ST) and in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), using new non-invasive and wearable technologies.

This project addresses specific aspects of intersubjective understanding in order to reveal some of the underlying mechanisms. Recent theoretical and neurophysiological approaches to intersubjectivity have underlined the immediate capacity, manifested by human beings, to understand the behavior of others as charged with meaning. How are we to be immediately able to understand others as intentional beings and bearers of mental content during our social interactions? The main hypothesis is that specific incorporated practices present from the earliest stages of development contribute to building these capacities that characterize adult life. Such practices require detailed analysis.

The TOUM project focuses on non-verbal communication in the form of gestures, which plays an important role during the child's daily interactions, also contributing to the emergence of language.ingwow. The main hypothesis will be verified through the elaboration of a specific taxonomy and the development of new non-invasive and portable technological platforms, which allow to carry out an analysis of the child's motor repertoire during gestural behavior both in children with TS and in children with ASD. This will allow us to evaluate the importance of a series of embodied practices (which emerge during the early stages of development) in the constitution of the ability to ascribe intentions and beliefs to others (which is characteristic of adult life), also shedding new light on the mechanisms that are the basis of intersubjective understanding. This project also aims to improve our understanding of autism spectrum disorders, a deficit that affects the ability to interact socially effectively.

The main research objectives of the TOUM project will therefore be:

1. theoretical objective: to verify the fundamental assumptions made by the incorporated approach to cognition, considering the role of children's motor repertoire during gestural behavior in building our ability to understand others.
2. functional objective: to produce an appropriate taxonomy for the qualitative analysis of gestural behavior both in children with TS and in children with ASD, in order to highlight the mechanisms underlying intentional understanding
3. technological objective: to develop a non-invasive and user-friendly technological platform and innovative methods that allow to obtain a greater quantity of information than is possible today on the motor repertoire of children during gestural activity.

Gesture analysis and classification will be able to capture qualitative aspects of gestures in an innovative way and offer a quantitative measurement of the motor repertoire during gestural behavior that has not yet been performed to date and which can be employed in future research .

Official Website: www.toum.it

Start and end date

2010 - 2014

Project Manager

Ing. Domenico Formica, fixed-term researcher

Coordinating institution of the project

National Research Council – Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies

Other Institutions involved

Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma

Funding source(s).

MIUR - Ministry of Education, University and Research