ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that many of the confusions and contradictions in the literature are attributable to viewing specific processes related to action understanding in isolation and not considering them as part of a larger system of development. It addresses some common misunderstandings and conceptual confusions when discussing action understanding. The chapter reviews evidence for and against the proposition that action understanding is related to motor experience. In spite of the extensive evidence for a mirroring mechanism in humans, the sufficiency or necessity of this mechanism for explaining action understanding is far from definitive. Selective attention is available from birth in the form of exogenous orienting or stimulus-driven attention. Some of the earliest evidence showing that infants’ could perceive the goals and not just the physical movements of others’ actions was based on looking time experiments. The likelihood of engaging in endogenous attention increases with age.
