Newborns’ early attuning to hand‐to‐mouth coordinated actions

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.