The early origins of goal attribution in infancy

Action experience alters 3-month-old infants' perception of others' actions

“…One possibility is that infants learned about the causal effect of the mittens on the toys, and this led them to focus on the relation between the mitten and the toy during the habituation phase, even though this effect was no longer present. This possibility is consistent both with the finding that mature action representations are structured with respect to causal outcomes (Hommel et al, 2001) and with the hypothesis that this is true in infancy (Hauf, Elsner, & Aschersleben, in press;Jovanovic, et al, under review;Kiraly et al, 2003). Action experience may also provide infants with information about the behavioral regularities that typically accompany an actor's goal (e.g.…”

“…Infants moved the toys after apprehending them, and apprehended the objects via varied reaches, and these features were absent from the habituation events. Both of these factors have been theorized to support infants' goal detection (Kiraly, Jovanovic, Prinz, Aschersleben, & Gergely, 2003).…”

15-month-old infants detect violations in pretend scenarios

“…During the pre-trials, the actor acted only upon the jug, merely holding it above one or the other of the objects without further consequence. Infants in the Woodward paradigm require there to be a known cause-effect relation between the act and the target object; without a known effect, infants will not interpret the act as directed toward that object (Bíró & Leslie, in press;Király et al, 2003;Woodward, 1999). In our pretend sequences the actor's actions had no effects on the test object; at least, no actual effects.…”

“…Recent evidence suggests that infants in the first year also regard other people as acting with goals (e.g., Guajardo & Woodward, 2004;Király, Jovanovic, Prinz, Aschersleben, & Gergely, 2003;Sommerville & Woodward, 2005;Thoermer & Sodian, 2001;Woodward, 1998Woodward, , 1999Woodward & Guajardo, 2002;Woodward & Sommerville, 2000) and will interpret appropriate motion patterns even in inanimate objects as goal-directed, such as the intention to choose or attend to one object rather than another (e.g., Bíró & Leslie, in press;Csibra, Bíró, Koós, & Gergely, 2003;Csibra, Gergely, Bíró, Koós, & Brockbank, 1999;Gergely, Nádasdy, Csibra, & Bíró, 1995;Johnson, Slaughter, & Carey, 1998;Kamewari, Kato, Kanda, Ishiguro, & Hiraki, 2005;Kuhlmeier, Wynn, & Bloom, 2003;Shimizu & Johnson, 2004), and do so even as young as five months of age (Luo & Baillargeon, 2005). The nature and development of the infant's understanding of intentional action have become central issues in infancy research.…”

Can 9.5-month-old infants attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action on objects?

“…To succeed at the present task, infants had to be able to accomplish three sub-tasks: first, they had to detect the goal underlying the agent's actions in each familiarization trial (e.g., sliding the fish, sliding the box, and so on); second, they had to compare the agent's goal-directed actions across trials, to extract their commonality; and third, they had to use this information to attribute to the agent a particular disposition, an inclination to slide objects. We assumed that the first sub-task was relatively easy for our infants: as we saw in the Introduction, by 9.5 months of age infants are able to attribute to agents a variety of simple goals including those of obtaining, contacting, or displacing objects (e.g., Jovanovic et al, in review; Király et al, 2003;Luo & Baillargeon, 2005a, 2005bLuo & Johnson, 2006;Sommerville & Woodward, 2005;Song et al, in review;Woodward, 1998). We also assumed that the third sub-task was well within our infants' capacity: as we saw earlier, infants this age can attribute to agents dispositions involving objects and agents (e.g., Kuhlmeier et al, in review;Luo & Baillargeon, 2005a, 2005bLuo & Johnson, 2006;Song et al, in review), so why not actions as well?…”