Abstract:

The body contains rich social information. Studying the body representation’s development in the early stage is significant for revealing body representation’s specific mechanism and further understanding the infants’ social development. Through looking at the theories about the body shape and the body movement, we summarize the representation patterns of the infant’s body structure information and movement information. At the same time, the article describes two theories on the infant's body representation development. Future researches should pay more attention to explain the specific development process and the controversial critical period of body representation in fancy. Moreover, the mechanism of biological motion preference on body representation should be explored through using the brain imaging technology.

Key words: infancy, body representation, body shape, body movement, configural processing