Janna M. Gottwald

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Psychology

The importance of executive functioning for later life outcomes, along with its potential to be positively affected by intervention programs, motivates the need to find early markers of executive functioning. In this study, 18-month-olds performed three executive-function tasks—involving simple inhibition, working memory, and more complex inhibitio...

Prospective motor control, a key element in activity, is the ability to adjust one’s actions with respect to task demands and action goals in an anticipatory manner. The current study investigates whether 14-month-olds are able to prospectively control their reaching actions based on the difficulty of the subsequent action. We used a reach-to-place...

Adults’ body representation is constrained by multisensory information and knowledge of the body such as its possible postures. This study (N = 180) tested for similar constraints in children. Using the rubber hand illusion with adults and 6‐ to 7‐year olds, we measured proprioceptive drift (an index of hand localization) and ratings of felt hand o...

There are vast potential applications for children's entertainment and education with modern virtual reality (VR) experiences, yet we know very little about how the movement or form of such a virtual body can influence children's feelings of control (agency) or the sensation that they own the virtual body (ownership). In two experiments, we gave a...

Knowledge of one’s own body size is a crucial facet of body representation, both for acting on the environment and perhaps also for constraining body ownership. However, representations of body size may be somewhat plastic, particularly to allow for physical growth in childhood. Here we report a developmental investigation into the role of hand siz...

Background The quality of children’s early home learning environment has an influence on their cognitive development, preliteracy skills, and subsequent educational outcomes. Early intervention programs that promote positive parenting behaviors and child cognition have great potential to positively influence children’s school readiness and thereby...

Several studies have previously investigated the effects of sticky mittens training on reaching and grasping development. However, recent critique casted doubts on the robustness of the motor effect of this training. The current study presents a pre‐registered report that aimed to generalize these effects to Swedish infants. Three‐month‐old infants...

Children’s and adults’ body representation is constrained by bottom-up multisensory information and by top-down knowledge on possible postures. Using the rubber hand illusion paradigm, this study (N = 229) investigates whether different fake hand sizes (60%, 80%, 100%, 120% or 140% of typical hand size) constrain embodiment in three age groups (6-...

In the current, empirically grounded paper, we first explore the ways in which manual actions, that is actions performed with hands and arms such as reaching, grasping, and manipulating objects, shape the mind. Based on recent empirical research, we suggest six embodied developmental pathways which solve unique challenges faced by infants and child...

Adults use vision during stepping and walking to fine-tune foot placement. However, the developmental profile of visually guided stepping is unclear. We asked (1) whether children use online vision to fine-tune precise steps and (2) whether precision stepping develops as part of broader visuomotor development, alongside other fundamental motor skil...

In this paper, we propose a novel model—the TWAIN model—to describe the durations of two-step actions in a reach-to-place task in human infants. Previous research demonstrates that infants and adults plan their actions across multiple steps. They adjust, for instance, the velocity of a reaching action depending on what they intend to do with the ob...

Adults’ body representation is constrained by multisensory information and knowledge of the body such as its possible postures. This study (N = 180) tested for similar constraints in children. Using the rubber hand illusion with adults and 6- to 7-year-olds, we measured proprioceptive drift (an index of hand localisation) and ratings of felt hand o...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a preprint, for open access version and updates see https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ejbs4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a preprint, for open access version and updates see https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ejbs4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

This study investigates how infants use visual and sensorimotor information to prospectively control their actions. We gave 14-month-olds two objects of different weight and observed how high they were lifted, using a Qualisys Motion Capture System. In one condition, the two objects were visually distinct (different color condition) in another they...

Prospective motor control, a key element of action planning, is the ability to adjust one’s actions with respect to task demands and action goals in an anticipatory manner. The current study investigates whether 14-month-olds are able to prospectively control their reaching actions based on the difficulty of the subsequent action. We used a reach-t...

This article critically reviews kinematic measures of prospective motor control. Prospective motor control, the ability to anticipatorily adjust movements with respect to task demands and action goals, is an important process involved in action planning. In manual object manipulation tasks, prospective motor control has been studied in various ways...

This thesis assesses the link between action and cognition early in development. Thus the notion of an embodied cognition is investigated by tying together two levels of action control in the context of reaching in infancy: prospective motor control and executive functions. The ability to plan our actions is the inevitable foundation of reaching ou...

This article critically reviews kinematic measures of prospective motor control. Prospective motor control, the ability to anticipatorily adjust movements with respect to task demands and action goals, is an important process involved in action planning. In manual object manipulation tasks, prospective motor control has been studied in various ways...

This article in the Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie first describes societal challenges arising from current migration activities. Additionally, we discuss common experiences of loss and tasks of integration that refugees typically face when arriving in a new society. Second, action-oriented approaches are introduced that help coping wi...

You can read my thesis online: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:942682/FULLTEXT01.pdf This thesis assesses the link between action and cognition early in development. Thus the notion of an embodied cognition is investigated by tying together two levels of action control in the context of reaching in infancy: prospective motor control and...

Positive objects or actions are associated with physical highness, whereas negative objects or actions are related to physical lowness. Previous research suggests that metaphorical connection (“good is up” or “bad is down”) between spatial experience and evaluation of objects is grounded in actual experience with the body. Prior studies investigate...

This study investigates how infants use visual and sensorimotor information to prospectively control their actions. We gave 14-month-olds two objects of different weight and observed how high they were lifted, using a Qualisys motion-capture system. In one condition the two objects were visually distinct (different color condition) in another they...

The current study is the first to investigate neural correlates of infants’ detection of pro- and antisocial agents. Differences in ERP component P400 over posterior temporal areas were found during six-month-olds’ observation of helping and hindering agents (Experiment 1), but not during observation of identically moving agents that did not help o...