Meta-analytic review of the development of infants’ anticipatory gaze in action prediction

Infants show the ability to predict simple human actions in the first year of life. This ability has been postulated as fundamental to the development of social cognition in childhood. The overarching goal of the present review is to update the literature testing the experience-based account of the development of action prediction in infancy. More specifically, we focus on the online paradigm measuring predictive gaze latency in infants. In the review, we ask: Question 1: Under what circumstances can infants predict other people’s manual actions? Question 2: Can infants predict human manual actions better than non-human actions? Question 3: Does an infant’s own manual action experience influence the ability to predict other people’s manual actions?