ABSTRACT
Infants come into this world endowed with action capabilities. As a result, they are able to sustain life in their new environment and prepared to explore and adapt to it. Neonates smeU, look, listen, and feel. They root to suck, orient their heads toward interesting sounds, extend their arms forward toward aUractive objects, and may even imitate facial gestures. All developing perception and cognition are in one way or another founded on these early capabilities. In this chapter I discuss the origins and development of actions and the possible role they play for the early development of perception and cognition.
