Three‐month‐old infants attribute goals to a non‐human agent

Abstract

The present research examined whether 3-month-old infants, the youngest found so far to engage in goal-related reasoning about human agents, would also act as if they attribute goals to a novel non-human agent, a self-propelled box. In two experiments, the infants seemed to have interpreted the box’s actions as goal-directed after seeing the box approach object A as opposed to object B during familiarization. They thus acted as though they expected the box to maintain this goal and responded with increased attention when the box approached object B during test. In contrast, when object B was absent during familiarization and introduced afterwards, the infants’ responses were consistent with their having recognized that they had no information to predict which of the two objects the box should choose during test and therefore responded similarly when the box approached either object. However, if object B was absent during familiarization and object A was in different positions but the box persistently approached it, thus demonstrating equifinal variations in its actions, the infants again acted as though they attributed to the box a goal directed towards object A and expected the box to maintain this goal even when object B was introduced and hence responded with prolonged looking when the box failed to do so during test. These results are consistent with the notion that (a) infants as young as 3 months appear to attribute goals to both human and non-human agents, and (b) even young infants can use certain behavioral cues, e.g. equifinal variations in agents’ actions, to make inferences about agents’ goals.

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

“…Negative results were obtained in a one-object task in which only the cone was present in the familiarization trials: Although infants could attribute to the box the goal of approaching the cone in the familiarization trials, they could not determine whether the box had a positive or only a neutral disposition toward the cone, and hence they could not predict which 37 object-the cone or the cylinder-the box would approach in the test trials. Luo (2011b) subsequently extended these results to 3-month-old infants.…”

“…Negative results were obtained in a one-object task in which only the cone was present in the familiarization trials: Although infants could attribute to the box the goal of approaching the cone in the familiarization trials, they could not determine whether the box had a positive or only a neutral disposition toward the cone, and hence they could not predict which 37 object-the cone or the cylinder-the box would approach in the test trials. Luo (2011b) subsequently extended these results to 3-month-old infants.Finally, to test more directly their interpretation of Woodward's (1998) results with the rod, arm-shaped screen, and mechanical claw, Luo and Baillargeon (2005a) conducted another experiment in which the box was equipped with a long handle that protruded through a window in the right wall of the apparatus. As predicted, infants looked equally at the two test events, presumably because they were uncertain whether the box was an agent.…”

Psychological Reasoning in Infancy

“…Or do infants reason from an early age about the actions of non-human agents? The available evidence supports the latter possibility: positive results have been obtained using non-human agents (e.g., boxes and geometric shapes) with infants as young as 3-6 months (a) in detour, preference, and other psychological-reasoning tasks (e.g., Csibra 2008;Luo 2011b;Schlottmann & Ray 2010) and (b) in sociomoral-reasoning tasks (e.g., Hamlin et al 2007Hamlin et al , 2010Hamlin & Wynn 2011). These findings naturally raise the question of how infants identify novel non-human entities as agents.…”

“…Once infants had identified this goal, they expected the agent to pursue it efficiently, in accordance with the efficiency principle. Although the young infants in this experiment were unable to focus on the agent's goal without an appropriate priming experience (see also Gerson & Woodward 2014;Sommerville et al 2005), it is unlikely that such an experience is always necessary, as positive results have been obtained with 3-month-olds in tasks involving richer or less minimal actions (e.g., Hamlin et al 2010;Luo 2011b). …”

“…As might be expected, only rational effort matters: infants do not attribute a positive disposition if the agent's effortful actions are inefficient because the toy stands next to the container or the detour is wider than necessary (e.g., Bíró et al 2011;Hernik & Southgate 2012). A final type of information, equifinality information, may constitute a special case of effort information: if an agent faces a single toy and approaches it in every familiarization trial even though the toy's position keeps changing (suggesting that the agent is willing to adjust its actions as needed to contact the toy), infants again conclude that the agent has a liking for the toy (Luo 2011b). …”