You changed your mind! Infants interpret a change in word as signaling a change in an agent’s goals

Fourteen- to Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Use Explicit Linguistic Information to Update an Agent’s False Belief

“…Consistent with the current findings, several experiments have shown that infants can update their own representations about physical or psychological states through language (e.g., Ganea et al, 2007, 2016; Ganea and Harris, 2010, 2013; Song et al, 2014; Jin and Song, 2017). For example, Ganea et al (2016) showed that infants as young as 16 months can update their representation of a visual presentation based on a verbal description of a change in that presentation (e.g., “Now the dog goes to the table!…”

“…The dog is on the table!”). In Jin and Song (2017), 12-month-olds updated their representations of others’ goals by using others’ words: they expected an actor to change her goal object in her upcoming actions if she changes her word from one to another before performing goal-oriented actions. The present findings suggest that infants use linguistic information not only to update their own mental representations but also to expect such updates in others.…”

“…Prior findings have shown that infants can use verbal information to update their own representations about unseen events (e.g., Ganea et al, 2007, 2016; Ganea and Harris, 2010, 2013). Infants can also update their representations about others’ psychological states such as goals based on others’ words (Song et al, 2014; Jin and Song, 2017).…”

Five-month-old infants attribute inferences based on general knowledge to agents

“…In a recent review, Scott et al (in press) presented evidence of substantial cognitive integration in psychological reasoning in the second year of life: Infants integrated inputs from several different cognitive processes, including language, ostensive cues, categorization, and sociomoral reasoning, when reasoning about others' motivational and epistemic states (Choi & Luo, 2015;Egyed et al, 2013;Forgács et al, 2020;Jin & Song, 2017;Jin et al, 2019;Martin et al, 2012;Scott et al, 2010;Spaepen & Spelke, 2007). The present findings, together with those of Vouloumanos et al (2014) described in the Introduction, thus extend this evidence by showing that infants' psychological reasoning already shows some degree of cognitive integration with physical-reasoning and language processes in the first half-year of life.…”