Do 8-Month-Old Infants Consider Situational Constraints When Interpreting Others' Gaze as Goal-Directed Action?

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
Yuyan Luo

Abstract

Some actions of agents are ambiguous in terms of goal-directedness to young infants. If given reasons why an agent performed these ambiguous actions, would infants then be able to perceive the actions as goal-directed? Prior results show that infants younger than 12 months can not encode the relationship between a human agent's looking behavior and the target of her gaze as goal-directed. In the present experiments, 8-month-olds responded in ways suggesting that they interpreted an agent's action of looking at object-A as opposed to object-B as evidence for her goal directed toward object-A, if her looking action was rational given certain situational constraints: a barrier separated her from the objects or her hands were occupied. Therefore, the infants seem to consider situational constraints when attributing goals to agents' otherwise ambiguous actions; they seem to realize that within such constraints, these actions are efficient ways for agents to achieve goals.

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Citations

Jan 10, 2012·Child Development·Jonathan S Beier, Elizabeth S Spelke
Aug 29, 2012·Developmental Science·Annette M E Henderson, Amanda L Woodward
Jun 11, 2011·Current Directions in Psychological Science·Yuyan Luo, Renée Baillargeon
Jan 5, 2012·Developmental Science·Yuyan Luo
Sep 24, 2015·Annual Review of Psychology·Renée BaillargeonLin Bian
Mar 29, 2014·Developmental Science·Rose M Scott, Renée Baillargeon
Feb 6, 2017·PloS One·Tik-Sze Carrey Siu, Him Cheung
Mar 9, 2013·Psychological Science·Rose M Scott, Renée Baillargeon
Aug 29, 2021·Acta Psychologica·Peter A White

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