Papers
2
Total Citations
87
H-Index
2
About
Jacqueline Fagard is a leading developmental psychologist whose research illuminates how infants discover their own bodies and learn to act upon the world. Her work centers on the emergence of sensorimotor intelligence, particularly the development of goal-directed reaching and the detection of self-generated sensory feedback. In a landmark 2017 study (63 citations), she and her team tracked infants from 3 to 21 months as they responded to vibrotactile stimulation on different body parts, revealing a clear developmental progression in the ability to locate and remove the source of stimulation. This work not only maps the timeline of body awareness but has inspired robotic models of early motor learning. Her comprehensive 2020 review (24 citations) synthesizes evidence that even newborns—and fetuses in utero—can detect sensorimotor contingencies, the causal links between their actions and resulting sensations. Fagard’s contributions have fundamentally shaped our understanding of how infants build a sense of agency and body schema, bridging experimental psychology with computational modeling. Her findings carry profound implications for early intervention in motor disorders and for designing artificial systems that learn like human babies.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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