Young children infer preferences from a single action, but not if it is constrained

Pesowski, Madison L.; Friedman, Ori

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.004

Cited by 35 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Research suggests that inferences beyond goal attribution are supported by an expectation that agents make choices by quantifying, comparing, and maximizing subjective utilities-the difference between the costs they incur and the rewards they obtain. This Naïve Utility Calculus allows us to infer the knowledge, preferences, and moral values that explain other people's goals (Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Schulz, & Tenenbaum, 2016;Jern, Lucas, & Kemp, 2017;Kleiman-Weiner, Saxe, & Tenenbaum, 2017;Lukas et al, 2014), and empirical work suggests that even young children share these expectations (Jara-Ettinger, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2015;Jara-Ettinger, Floyd, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2017;Pesowski, Denison, & Friedman, 2016;Lucas et al, 2014), with some basic form of the Naïve Utility Calculus in place in infancy (Liu, Ullman, Tenenbaum, & Spelke, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Naive Utility Calculus as a unified, quantitative framework for action understanding

Jara‐Ettinger¹,

Schulz²,

Tenenbaum³

2019

Preprint

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The human ability to reason about the causes behind other people’ behavior is critical for navigating the social world. Recent empirical research with both children and adults suggests that this ability is structured around an assumption that other agents act to maximize some notion of subjective utility. In this paper, we present a formal theory of this Naïve Utility Calculus as a probabilistic generative model, which highlights the role of cost and reward tradeoffs in a Bayesian framework for action-understanding. Our model predicts with quantitative accuracy how people infer agents’ subjective costs and rewards based on their observable actions. By distinguishing between desires, goals, and intentions, the model extends to complex action scenarios unfolding over space and time in scenes with multiple objects and multiple action episodes. We contrast our account with simpler model variants and a set of special-case heuristics across a wide range of action-understanding tasks: inferring costs and rewards, making confidence judgments about relative costs and rewards, combining inferences from multiple events, predicting future behavior, inferring knowledge or ignorance, and reasoning about social goals. Our work sheds light on the basic representations and computations that structure our everyday ability to make sense of and navigate the social world.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Naive Utility Calculus as a unified, quantitative framework for action understanding

Jara‐Ettinger¹,

Schulz²,

Tenenbaum³

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, there are reasons to believe that the prerequisite inferential and evaluative capacities for such understanding are present in early childhood. First, even infants can infer others' intentions and preferences from their choices (Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997;Phillips & Wellman, 2005;Woodward, 2009); some studies suggest that these inferences are made in light of alternative actions that are available to the actor in the context (Gergely, Bekkering, & Kiraly, 2002;Kushnir, Xu, & Wellman, 2010;Kushnir, 2018;Pesowski, Denison, & Friedman, 2016). Toddlers and preschoolers are more likely to interpret an agent's choice as an indicator of her underlying preferences when the agent foregoes more probable alternative options and chooses a less probable option instead (Kushnir et al, 2010; see EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS 7 also Gweon, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2010 for a similar sensitivity, but about inferring object properties).…”

Section: Evaluations Of Social Mindfulnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful Actions

Xin¹,

Zhang²,

Gweon³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies (N=566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities vs. culture-specific norms in children’s moral evaluations.

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“…Even young children's intuitions about other people's preferences align with the predictions of the Naïve Utility Calculus. Five-year-olds infer high rewards when an agent incurs a high cost and, conversely, they infer high costs when an agent foregoes a high reward (Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2015;Pesowski, Denison, & Friedman, 2016). Children at this age also understand that agents do not maximize the utilities they obtain, but the utilities they expect to obtain.…”

Section: The Naïve Utility Calculusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Pragmatics: Preschoolers Rely on Commonsense Psychology to Resolve Referential Underspecification

et al. 2019

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Four experiments show that four-and five-year-olds (total N=112) can identify the referent of under-determined utterances through their Naïve Utility Calculus-an intuitive theory of people's behavior structured around an assumption that agents maximize utilities. In Experiments 1-2, a puppet asked for help without specifying whom she was talking to ("Can you help me?"). In Experiments 3-4, a puppet asked the child to pass an object without specifying

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Young children infer preferences from a single action, but not if it is constrained

Cited by 35 publications

References 45 publications

The Naive Utility Calculus as a unified, quantitative framework for action understanding

The Naive Utility Calculus as a unified, quantitative framework for action understanding

Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful Actions

Social Pragmatics: Preschoolers Rely on Commonsense Psychology to Resolve Referential Underspecification

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