Background It is suggested by theories of embodiment that embodied experience brings meaningful units of sensory-motor nature that are a vehicle to understand abstract concepts. Some of those units are the image-schemas: they are preconceptual embodied structures that function as Gestalts and represent the most basic spatial-temporal relationships. Although the specific literature focus on the relationship between image-schemas and linguistic meaning, almost nothing is known about the way these structures begin to form in human development. Research in developmental psychology shows the contribution of intuitive parenting as a framework in the acquisition of complex cognitive capacities (such as language) and highlights the role of the movement in the complex performances that adults bring to infants. Those studies underlie the early infant’s ability to experience other’s actions –altercentric perception- which is accompanied by an observable participant perception. Recent research has detected the presence of some image-schemas in intuitive adult’s performances. Aims: To analyse the embedding of image-schemas in adult’s multimodal performance with respect to: the relationship between the information conveyed by performance and the composition of the salient features of the schema; and the behavioural manifestations of infant’s participant perception in relation to the salient features of the image-schema. Method: Microanalysis of an adult-infant (6.5 months old) interaction in which the image-schema SOURCE-PATH-GOAL is evident was run. The spoken component of the performance was nalyzed using Praat 4.5.1.6 and the movement analysis was performed using Diglo 12.0. Results: Results show: (i) unities of repetition-variation related to the performance of the image-schema, (ii) multimodal redundancy and semantic correlation between sound and movement, located in key points of the schema (source, path and goal), and (iii) indicators of the infant’s participant perception in locations underlined by multimodal redundancy. Discussion: It is argued that, long before infants are able to shape image-schemas in their own environmental activity, they experience them by means of their participant perception of image-schemas embedded in adult’s performances. The perceptual salience of image-schemas as shaped in performance is discussed. It is suggested that the perceptual salience of image-schematic features in performance conveys another case of parental framework to the acquisition of complex abilities.