The ability to predict actions of others from distributed cues is still developing in six- to eight-year-old children

Abstract

Adults use distributed cues in the bodies of others to predict and counter their actions. To investigate the development of this ability, adults and 6- to 8-year-old children played a competitive game with a confederate who reached toward one of two targets. Child and adult participants, who sat across from the confederate, attempted to beat the confederate to the target by touching it before the confederate did. Adults used cues distributed through the head, shoulders, torso and arms to predict the reaching actions. Children, in contrast, used cues in the arms and torso but not in the head or shoulders to predict the actions. These results provide evidence for a qualitative change in the ability to respond rapidly to predictive cues to others’ actions from childhood to adulthood. Despite humans’ sensitivity to action goals even in infancy, cues from the head and body do not influence their rapid action predictions in interactive settings as late as 8 years of age.