Speaker: Chiara Turati (Unimib)
Prof. Chiara Turati, PhD. has a permanent position as Full Professor at the Department of Psychology, UNIMIB. Her research interests focus on early child development, with specific reference to the domain of action understanding and face processing. As Principal Investigator, Chiara Turati coordinated a European Research Council Starting Grant. She is also part of a H2020-MSCA Innovative Training Network. Her contribution to a better understanding of early development has been recognized internationally through more than 50 publications. She coordinates a lab for the study of children’s development through behavioral (visual preference and habituation paradigms) and neuropsychological measures (electroencephalography, EEG; event-related potentials, ERP; electromyography, EMG; skin conductance response, SCR). She now serves as President of the Master Course “Psicologia dello Sviluppo e dei Processi Educativi”.
Title
Social gestures shape early development
Abstract
Infants are highly attuned to social signals. By capitalizing on both behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this talk will present evidence showing that early sensorimotor experience shape infants’ action perception and understanding, and that social gestures have a significant impact on infant behavior and brain processes. Infants are capable of differentiating possible from impossible hand gestures that are part of their sensorimotor experience, and their sensorimotor system is recruited during infants’ processing of observed actions. The effects of self-experienced gestures of ostracism on infants’ behavior and neurophysiological responses will be addressed, demonstrating that ostracism affects infants’ behavior during social interactions as well as their neural processing of emotional facial expressions. Furthermore, evidence will be presented indicating that infants can discriminate between positive and negative touch gestures observed in their surrounding environment, and that maternal touch can affect infants’ attentional disengagement from emotional facial expressions. By signaling safety, maternal touch promotes the exploration of negative facial emotional expression. Overall, these findings highlight the foundational role of early sensorimotor and social experiences in shaping infants’ socio-cognitive and neural development.
Everyone interested is welcome to attend.
The meeting will be held in English.
Participation is strongly recommended for students of the Doctoral School in Philosophy and Human Sciences and for students of the Doctoral School “The Human Mind and its Explanations: Language, Brain, and Reasoning”.
Where: Online
When: 11/03/2026 – 17:00 CET
Attendance: Attendance is free and open to all, but registration is needed by email [angelica.kaufmann@unimi.it]