Already inside the womb, fetuses frequently bring their hands to the mouth, anticipating hand-to-mouth contact by opening the mouth. Here, we explored whether 2-day-old newborns discriminate between hand actions directed towards different targets of the face—that is, a thumb that reaches the mouth and a thumb that reaches the chin. Newborns looked longer towards the thumb-to-mouth compared to the thumb-to-chin action only in the presence, and not absence, of anticipatory mouth opening movements, preceding the thumb arrival. Overall, our results show that newborns are sensitive to hand-to-face coordinated actions, being capable to discriminate between body-related actions directed towards different targets of the face, but only when a salient visual cue that anticipates the target of the action is present. The role of newborns’ sensorimotor experience with hand-to-mouth gestures in driving this capacity is discussed.

中文翻译：

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新生儿早期适应手到嘴的协调动作

已经在子宫内的胎儿经常将手放在嘴边，通过张开嘴来期待手对嘴的接触。在这里，我们探讨了 2 天大的新生儿是否能够区分针对面部不同目标的手部动作——即到达嘴巴的拇指和到达下巴的拇指。与拇指对下巴的动作相比，新生儿对拇指对嘴的观察时间更长，仅在拇指到达之前存在而不是不存在预期的张口动作时。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，新生儿对面对面的协调动作很敏感，能够区分针对面部不同目标的与身体相关的动作，但前提是预期动作目标的显着视觉线索是当下。