Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: Understanding people and their actions.

Legerstee, Maria; Barna, Joanne; DiAdamo, Carolyn

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.36.5.627

Cited by 66 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In addition, previous work similarly indicates that gaze-following does not determine the extent to which infants monitor speakers in a conversation (Augusti et al, 2010). Finally, while we did not compare infants' looking to a human addressee with their looking to a nonhuman target, looking time studies suggest that at least by 10 months, if not earlier (Legerstee, Barna, & DiAdamo, 2000), infants expect people to converse with and look at other people, rather than inanimate objects (Beier & Spelke, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

1- and 2-year-olds’ expectations about third-party communicative actions

Thorgrimsson

Fawcett

Liszkowski

2015

Infant Behavior and Development

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a b s t r a c tInfants expect people to direct actions toward objects, and they respond to actions directed to themselves, but do they have expectations about actions directed to third parties? In two experiments, we used eye tracking to investigate 1-and 2-year-olds' expectations about communicative actions addressed to a third party. Experiment 1 presented infants with videos where an adult (the Emitter) either uttered a sentence or produced non-speech sounds. The Emitter was either face-to-face with another adult (the Recipient) or the two were back-to-back. The Recipient did not respond to any of the sounds. We found that 2-, but not 1-year-olds looked quicker and longer at the Recipient following speech than nonspeech, suggesting that they expected her to respond to speech. These effects were specific to the face-to-face context. Experiment 2 presented 1-year-olds with similar face-to-face exchanges but modified to engage infants and minimize task demands. The infants looked quicker to the Recipient following speech than non-speech, suggesting that they expected a response to speech. The study suggests that by 1 year of age infants expect communicative actions to be directed at a third-party listener.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

1- and 2-year-olds’ expectations about third-party communicative actions

Thorgrimsson

Fawcett

Liszkowski

2015

Infant Behavior and Development

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“…A variety of research suggests that the bare bones of the ability to recognize action as goal directed is in place by the middle of the first year of life (Daum, Prinz, & Aschersleben, 2008;Jovanovic, Király, Elsner, Gergely, Prinz, & Aschersleben, 2007;Legerstee, Barna, & DiAdamo, 2000;Woodward, 1998). Woodward (1998), for example, used a visual habituation paradigm to assess infants' construal of a simple reach and grasp event.…”

Section: Social Understanding: Understanding Action As Goal-directedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming a social agent: Developmental foundations of an embodied social psychology

Daum

Sommerville

Prinz

2009

Euro J Social Psych

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In this paper, we argue that young infants serve as ideal models for disentangling the relative contributions of embodied and symbolic processes to mature social cognition and behavior. Based on evidence suggesting that infants possess a nascent ability to understand others' actions, and to interact and communicate with others in meaningful ways, we argue that the embodiment processes underlying these skills in infancy may also account for a significant portion of adults' social understanding and behavior. Based on evidence suggesting both continuity and change in social understanding and behavior as children encounter a formal language system, and evidence suggesting that manipulating the mode of processing influences social understanding, we argue that embodied and symbolic modes of understanding are potentially dissociable and can yield different construals of the same social behavior. Finally, we suggest that the study of infancy can elucidate outstanding issues in the adult social psychology, and close by providing one illustration of the way in which it might do so.

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“…Moreover, infants connect these perceptual attributes to their developing knowledge of how agents behave. For example, by 6 months of age, infants expect people, but not inanimate objects, to engage in self-propelled motion and conversational exchanges (e.g., Kosugi & Fujita, 2002;Legerstee et al, 2000;Molina, Van de Walle, Condry, & Spelke, in press;Poulin-Dubois, Lepage, & Ferland, 1996;Spelke, Phillips, & Woodward, 1995; for a review, see Rakison & Poulin-Dubois, 2001). …”

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confidence: 99%

Is Agency Skin Deep? Surface Attributes Influence Infants' Sensitivity to Goal‐Directed Action

Guajardo¹,

Woodward²

2004

Infancy

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Three studies investigated the role of surface attributes in infants' identification of agents, using a habituation paradigm designed to tap infants' interpretation of grasping as goal directed (Woodward, 1998). When they viewed a bare human hand grasping objects, 7-and 12-month-old infants focused on the relation between the hand and its goal. When the surface properties of the hand were obscured by a glove, however, neither 7-nor 12-month-old infants represented its actions as goal directed (Study 1). Next, infants were shown that the gloved hands were part of a person either prior to (Study 2) or during (Study 3) the habituation procedure. Infants who actively monitored the gloved person in Study 2 and older infants in Study 3 interpreted the gloved reaches as goal directed. Thus, varying the extent to which an entity is identifiable as a person impacts infants' interpretation of the entity as an agent.The distinction between animate agents and inanimate objects is fundamental to both everyday and abstract acts of human cognition. Observing a child chasing a soccer ball, we are not surprised when the child swerves to avoid a tree, but we would be if the ball behaved like the child. We identify the child as an animate agent, and therefore interpret her behavior as expressing her underlying goals or intentions. We understand that this interpretation is not appropriately extended to inanimate objects such as balls. Our ability to quickly categorize entities as agents or inanimate objects is supported by rich perceptual regularities. Animate agents differ from inanimate objects in their typical shapes, rigidity, surface properties, sounds, and patterns of motion. These perceptual attributes correlate with the behavioral and psychological attributes that are central to folk conceptions of agents INFANCY, 6(3),

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Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: Understanding people and their actions.

Cited by 66 publications

References 27 publications

1- and 2-year-olds’ expectations about third-party communicative actions

1- and 2-year-olds’ expectations about third-party communicative actions

Becoming a social agent: Developmental foundations of an embodied social psychology

Is Agency Skin Deep? Surface Attributes Influence Infants' Sensitivity to Goal‐Directed Action

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