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Bothe R, Eiteljoerge S, Trouillet L, Elsner B, Mani N. Better in sync: Temporal dynamics explain multisensory word-action-object learning in early development. INFANCY 2024; 29:482-509. [PMID: 38520389 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12590] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/25/2024]
Abstract
We investigated the temporal impact of multisensory settings on children's learning of word-object and action-object associations at 1- and 2-years of age. Specifically, we examined whether the temporal alignment of words and actions influenced the acquisition of novel word-action-object associations. We used a preferential looking and violation of expectation task in which infants and young children were first presented with two distinct word-object and action-object pairings either in a synchronous (overlapping in time) or sequential manner (one after the other). Findings revealed that 2-year-olds recognized both, action-object and word-object associations when they first saw the word-action-object combinations synchronously, but not sequentially, as evidenced by looking behavior. 1-year-olds did not show evidence for recognition for either of the word-object and action-object pairs, regardless of the initial temporal alignment of these cues. To control for individual differences, we explored factors that might influence associative learning based on parental reports of 1- and 2-year-olds development, however, developmental measures did not explain word-action-object associative learning in either group. We discuss that while young children may benefit from the temporal alignment of multisensory cues as it enables them to actively engage with the multisensory content in real-time, infants may have been overwhelmed by the complexity of this input.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricarda Bothe
- Psychology of Language, Georg-August University Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", Goettingen, Germany
| | - Sarah Eiteljoerge
- Psychology of Language, Georg-August University Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", Goettingen, Germany
| | - Leonie Trouillet
- Developmental Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Birgit Elsner
- Developmental Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Nivedita Mani
- Psychology of Language, Georg-August University Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", Goettingen, Germany
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2
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Gönül G, Kammermeier M, Paulus M. What is in an action? Preschool children predict that agents take previous paths and not previous goals. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13466. [PMID: 38054272 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2021] [Revised: 11/17/2023] [Accepted: 11/27/2023] [Indexed: 12/07/2023]
Abstract
Developmental science has experienced a vivid debate on whether young children prioritize goals over means in their prediction of others' actions. Influential developmental theories highlight the role of goal objects for action understanding. Yet, recent infant studies report evidence for the opposite. The empirical evidence is therefore inconclusive. The current study advanced this debate by assessing preschool children's verbal predictions of others' actions. In five experiments (N = 302), we investigated whether preschool children and adults predict agents to move towards their previous goal (that is, show goal-related predictions) or predict agents to move along the same movement path that they pursued before. While Experiments 1a, 1b and 1c presented young children and adults with animated agents, Experiments 2a and 2b presented participants with human grasping action. An integrative analysis across experiments revealed that children were more likely to predict the agent to move along the same movement path, Z = -4.574, p ≤ 0.0001 (r = 0.304). That is, preschool children were more likely to predict that agents would move along the same trajectory even though this action would lead to a new goal object. Thus, our findings suggest that young children's action prediction relies on the detection of spatial and movement information. Overall, we discuss our findings in terms of theoretical frameworks that conceive of action understanding as an umbrella term that comprises different forms and facets in which humans understand others' actions. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We investigated whether preschool children predict agents to move towards their previous goal or to move along the same movement path that they pursued before. Unlike adults, preschool children predicted that agents would move along the same trajectory even though this action would lead to a new goal. Adults' goal-based predictions were affected from contextual details, whereas children systematically made path-based predictions. Young children's action prediction relies on the detection of spatial and movement information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gökhan Gönül
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchatel, Switzerland
| | - Marina Kammermeier
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
| | - Markus Paulus
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
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3
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Lonardo L, Völter CJ, Lamm C, Huber L. Dogs Rely On Visual Cues Rather Than On Effector-Specific Movement Representations to Predict Human Action Targets. Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:588-607. [PMID: 37840756 PMCID: PMC10575556 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00096] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2023] [Accepted: 07/18/2023] [Indexed: 10/17/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to predict others' actions is one of the main pillars of social cognition. We investigated the processes underlying this ability by pitting motor representations of the observed movements against visual familiarity. In two pre-registered eye-tracking experiments, we measured the gaze arrival times of 16 dogs (Canis familiaris) who observed videos of a human or a conspecific executing the same goal-directed actions. On the first trial, when the human agent performed human-typical movements outside dogs' specific motor repertoire, dogs' gaze arrived at the target object anticipatorily (i.e., before the human touched the target object). When the agent was a conspecific, dogs' gaze arrived to the target object reactively (i.e., upon or after touch). When the human agent performed unusual movements more closely related to the dogs' motor possibilities (e.g., crawling instead of walking), dogs' gaze arrival times were intermediate between the other two conditions. In a replication experiment, with slightly different stimuli, dogs' looks to the target object were neither significantly predictive nor reactive, irrespective of the agent. However, when including looks at the target object that were not preceded by looks to the agents, on average dogs looked anticipatorily and sooner at the human agent's action target than at the conspecific's. Looking times and pupil size analyses suggest that the dogs' attention was captured more by the dog agent. These results suggest that visual familiarity with the observed action and saliency of the agent had a stronger influence on the dogs' looking behaviour than effector-specific movement representations in anticipating action targets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucrezia Lonardo
- Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine of Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Christoph J. Völter
- Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine of Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Claus Lamm
- Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Department of Cognition, Emotion and Methods in Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Ludwig Huber
- Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine of Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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4
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Essler S, Christner N, Becher T, Paulus M. The ontogenetic emergence of normativity: How action imitation relates to infants' norm enforcement. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 227:105591. [PMID: 36434844 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105591] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2022] [Revised: 09/13/2022] [Accepted: 11/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Major developmental theories allot imitation a pivotal role in the cultural acquisition of social norms. Although there exists considerable evidence of young children's norm enforcement behavior, the ontogenetic emergence of normativity and the role of imitation is debated. Here, we assessed two pathways of how general imitation tendencies might relate to norm enforcement: The compliance path holds that young children's general imitation tendencies lead to displaying compliant behavior, which in turn predicts norm enforcement toward third parties. The internalization path suggests that young children's general imitation tendencies lead to an internal representation of normative rules. As children observe third parties' normative transgressions, a perceived discrepancy between internalized representation of the rule and observed behavior arises, which in turn triggers corrective action, that is, norm enforcement behavior. We assessed 18-month-olds' (N = 97) general imitation tendencies across four tasks, their compliance with maternal directives across two tasks, and their self-distress as well as protest behavior following normative transgressions. Results showed that (a) whereas imitation significantly predicted compliance behavior, compliance did not predict norm enforcement behavior, and that (b) imitation predicted self-distress, which in turn predicted norm enforcement. These findings speak to internalization as one psychological basis of norm enforcement behavior and highlight the importance of imitation in the ontogenetic emergence of normativity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samuel Essler
- Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, 80802 Munich, Germany; FOM University of Applied Sciences, 45127 Essen, Germany.
| | | | - Tamara Becher
- Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, 80802 Munich, Germany
| | - Markus Paulus
- Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, 80802 Munich, Germany
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5
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Davis EL, Parsafar P, Brady SM. Early antecedents of emotion differentiation and regulation: Experience tunes the appraisal thresholds of emotional development in infancy. Infant Behav Dev 2023; 70:101786. [PMID: 36370666 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101786] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2022] [Revised: 10/14/2022] [Accepted: 11/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
In this review, we synthesize evidence to highlight cognitive appraisal as an important developmental antecedent of individual differences in emotion differentiation and adept emotion regulation. Emotion differentiation is the degree to which emotions are experienced in a nuanced or "granular" way-as specific and separable phenomena. More extensive differentiation is related to positive wellbeing and has emerged as a correlate of emotion regulation skill among adults. We argue that the cognitive appraisal processes that underlie these facets of emotional development are instantiated early in the first year of life and tuned by environmental input and experience. Powerful socializing input in the form of caregivers' contingent and selective responding to infants' emotional signals carves and calibrates the infant's appraisal thresholds for what in their world ought to be noticed, deemed as important or personally meaningful, and responded to (whether and how). These appraisal thresholds are thus unique to the individual child despite the ubiquity of the appraisal process in emotional responding. This appraisal infrastructure, while plastic and continually informed by experience across the lifespan, likely tunes subsequent emotion differentiation, with implications for children's emotion regulatory choices and skills. We end with recommendations for future research in this area, including the urgent need for developmental emotion science to investigate the diverse sociocultural contexts in which children's cognitive appraisals, differentiation of emotions, and regulatory responses are being built across childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Parisa Parsafar
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, USA
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6
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Socially evaluative contexts facilitate mentalizing. Trends Cogn Sci 2023; 27:17-29. [PMID: 36357300 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.10.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2021] [Revised: 10/08/2022] [Accepted: 10/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Our ability to understand others' minds stands at the foundation of human learning, communication, cooperation, and social life more broadly. Although humans' ability to mentalize has been well-studied throughout the cognitive sciences, little attention has been paid to whether and how mentalizing differs across contexts. Classic developmental studies have examined mentalizing within minimally social contexts, in which a single agent seeks a neutral inanimate object. Such object-directed acts may be common, but they are typically consequential only to the object-seeking agent themselves. Here, we review a host of indirect evidence suggesting that contexts providing the opportunity to evaluate prospective social partners may facilitate mentalizing across development. Our article calls on cognitive scientists to study mentalizing in contexts where it counts.
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Brandone AC, Stout W. The Origins of Theory of Mind in Infant Social Cognition: Investigating Longitudinal Pathways from Intention Understanding and Joint Attention to Preschool Theory of Mind. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2022; 24:375-396. [PMID: 37456364 PMCID: PMC10348704 DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2022.2146117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of literature has established longitudinal associations between key social cognitive capacities emerging in infancy and children's subsequent theory of mind. However, existing work is limited by modest sample sizes, narrow infant measures, and theory of mind assessments with restricted variability and generalizability. The current study aimed to extend this literature by (a) recruiting a large sample of participants (n = 116; 53 boys; 63 girls; all U.S. residents; 88 White, 8 Hispanic or Latino, 2 Black or African American, 14 two or more races/ethnicities, 4 unknown; median family income: $74-122,000), (b) examining multiple measures of infant social cognition (intentional action understanding, responding to joint attention, initiating joint attention) at Time 1 (8-12 months), and (c) using an ecologically valid theory of mind assessment designed to capture individual differences in preschoolers' mental state understanding (the Children's Social Understanding Scale; Tahiroglu et al., 2014) at Time 2 (37-45 months). Measured variable path analysis revealed a significant longitudinal association between infants' initiating joint attention and later theory of mind: infants who engaged in more attempts to initiate joint attention with experimenters through gaze alternation or gestures went on to show better parent-reported mental state understanding as preschoolers. Notably, the paths from infants' responding to joint attention and intentional action understanding to later theory of mind did not emerge as significant. These findings bolster and clarify existing claims about how mental state reasoning is rooted in foundational social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy.
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Manzi F, Ishikawa M, Di Dio C, Itakura S, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Massaro D, Marchetti A. Infants’ Prediction of Humanoid Robot’s Goal-Directed Action. Int J Soc Robot 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s12369-022-00941-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
AbstractSeveral studies have shown that infants anticipate human goal-directed actions, but not robot’s ones. However, the studies focusing on the robot goal-directed actions have mainly analyzed the effect of mechanical arms on infant’s attention. To date, the prediction of goal-directed actions in infants has not yet been studied when the agent is a humanoid robot. Given this lack of evidence in infancy research, the present study aims at analyzing infants’ action anticipation of both a human’s and a humanoid robot’s goal-directed action. Data were acquired on thirty 17-month-old infants, watching four video clips, where either a human or a humanoid robot performed a goal-directed action, i.e. reaching a target. Infants looking behavior was measured through the eye-tracking technique. The results showed that infants anticipated the goal-directed action of both the human and the robot and there were no differences in the anticipatory gaze behavior between the two agents. Furthermore, the findings indicated different attentional patterns for the human and the robot, showing a greater attention paid to the robot's face than the human’s face. Overall, the results suggest that 17-month-old infants may infer also humanoid robot’ underlying action goals.
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9
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Stahl AE, Kibbe MM. Great expectations: The construct validity of the violation‐of‐expectation method for studying infant cognition. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2359] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Aimee E. Stahl
- Department of Psychology The College of New Jersey Ewing New Jersey USA
| | - Melissa M. Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Center for Systems Neuroscience Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA
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10
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Tan E, Hamlin JK. Mechanisms of social evaluation in infancy: A preregistered exploration of infants' eye-movement and pupillary responses to prosocial and antisocial events. INFANCY 2021; 27:255-276. [PMID: 34873821 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12447] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2020] [Revised: 07/29/2021] [Accepted: 11/15/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Past research shows infants selectively touch and look longer at characters who help versus hinder others (Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 2007, 450, 557; Three-month-olds show a negativity bias in their social evaluations. Developmental Science, 2010, 13, 923); however, the mechanisms underlying this tendency remain underspecified. The current preregistered experiment approaches this question by examining infants' real-time looking behaviors during prosocial and antisocial events, and exploring how individual infants' looking behaviors correlate with helper preferences. Using eye-tracking, 34 five-month-olds were familiarized with two blocks of the "hill" scenario originally developed by Kuhlmeier et al. (Attribution of dispositional states by 12-month-olds. Psychological Science, 2003, 14, 402), in which a climber tries unsuccessfully to reach the top of a hill and is alternately helped or hindered. Infants' visual preferences were assessed after each block of 6 helping and hindering events by proportional looking time to the helper versus hinderer in an image of the characters side by side. Results showed that, at the group level, infants looked longer at the helper after viewing 12 (but not after viewing 6) helping and hindering videos. Moreover, individual infants' average preference for the helper was predicted by their looking behaviors, particularly those suggestive of an understanding of the climber's unfulfilled goal. These results shed light on how infants process helping/hindering scenarios, and suggest that goal understanding is important for infants' helper preferences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Enda Tan
- University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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11
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Kampis D, Kármán P, Csibra G, Southgate V, Hernik M. A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju and Csibra (2007). ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2021; 8:210190. [PMID: 34457336 PMCID: PMC8386515 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2021] [Accepted: 07/15/2021] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
The study by Southgate et al. (2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 587-592. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x)) has been widely cited as evidence for false-belief attribution in young children. Recent replication attempts of this paradigm have yielded mixed results: several studies did not replicate the original findings, raising doubts about the suitability of the paradigm to assess non-verbal action prediction and Theory of Mind. In a preregistered collaborative study including two of the original authors, we tested one hundred and sixty 24- to 26-month-olds across two locations using the original stimuli, procedure and analyses as closely as possible. We found no evidence for action anticipation: only roughly half of the infants looked to the location of an agent's impending action when action prediction did not require taking into account the agent's beliefs and a similar number when the agent held a false-belief. These results and other non-replications suggest that this paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false-belief understanding in 2-year-olds. While the present results do not support any claim regarding the presence or absence of Theory of Mind in infants, we conclude that an important piece of evidence that has to date supported arguments for the existence of this competence can no longer serve that function.
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Affiliation(s)
- D. Kampis
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - P. Kármán
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - G. Csibra
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
| | - V. Southgate
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - M. Hernik
- Department of Psychology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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McMahon E, Kim D, Mehr SA, Nakayama K, Spelke ES, Vaziri-Pashkam M. The ability to predict actions of others from distributed cues is still developing in 6- to 8-year-old children. J Vis 2021; 21:14. [PMID: 34003244 PMCID: PMC8131995 DOI: 10.1167/jov.21.5.14] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Adults use distributed cues in the bodies of others to predict and counter their actions. To investigate the development of this ability, we had adults and 6- to 8-year-old children play a competitive game with a confederate who reached toward one of two targets. Child and adult participants, who sat across from the confederate, attempted to beat the confederate to the target by touching it before the confederate did. Adults used cues distributed through the head, shoulders, torso, and arms to predict the reaching actions. Children, in contrast, used cues in the arms and torso, but we did not find any evidence that they could use cues in the head or shoulders to predict the actions. These results provide evidence for a change in the ability to respond rapidly to predictive cues to others’ actions from childhood to adulthood. Despite humans’ sensitivity to action goals even in infancy, the ability to read cues from the body for action prediction in rapid interactive settings is still developing in children as old as 6 to 8 years of age.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emalie McMahon
- Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.,
| | - Daniel Kim
- Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.,
| | - Samuel A Mehr
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.,
| | - Ken Nakayama
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,
| | | | - Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam
- Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.,
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Jartó M, Liszkowski U. Inferring hidden objects from still and communicative onlookers at 8, 14, and 36 months of age. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 207:105115. [PMID: 33706217 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105115] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2020] [Revised: 12/23/2020] [Accepted: 01/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
The current study investigated across five eye-tracking experiments children's developing skill of adopting others' referential perspective (Level 1 perspective taking) and to what extent it involves automatic processes or requires ostensive communicative cues. Three age groups (8-, 14-, and 36-month-olds) were tested on their expectation of an object appearing behind one of two peripheral occluders. A centrally presented person in profile either provided an ostensive communicative pointing cue or sat still, oriented to one of the two occluders. The 14-month-olds anticipated the hidden object when the onlooker had communicatively pointed to the location, as revealed by faster target detection in congruent trials (latency effect) and longer dwell times to the empty side in incongruent trials (violation-of-expectation effect). This was not the case when a still person was only oriented to one side. Adding emotional expressions to the still person (Experiment 2) did not help to produce the effects. However, at 36 months of age (Experiment 3), children showed both effects for the still person. The 8-month-olds did not show the violation-of-expectation effect for communicative pointing (Experiment 4) or for a matched abbreviated reach (Experiment 5b), showing it only for a complete reach behind the occluder (Experiment 5a), although they were faster to detect the congruent object in Experiment 4 and 5a. Findings reveal that automatic perspective taking develops after communicative perspective taking and that communicative perspective taking is a developmental outcome of the first year of life. The developmental pattern suggests a continuous social construction process of perspective-taking skills.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marianna Jartó
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany.
| | - Ulf Liszkowski
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
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Stout W, Karahuta E, Laible D, Brandone AC. A longitudinal study of the differential social-cognitive foundations of early prosocial behaviors. INFANCY 2021; 26:271-290. [PMID: 33332764 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12381] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2019] [Revised: 07/28/2020] [Accepted: 11/17/2020] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of work has documented the emergence of instrumental helping and sharing in the second year of life; however, less is known about mechanisms that underlie development and production of prosocial behavior. The current study took a longitudinal approach to explore whether the origins of prosocial behaviors can be traced back to foundational social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy. In a sample of 90 children, longitudinal relations were examined between intention understanding and joint attention measured in infancy (8-12 months) and later instrumental helping and sharing behavior assessed in the toddler years (18-25 months). We expected social-cognitive capacities supporting infants' understanding of others to be positively related to their prosocial behaviors as toddlers. Measured variable path analyses revealed two distinct developmental pathways from infant social cognition to later prosocial behavior: 1) Instrumental helping in the toddler years was positively predicted by intention understanding in infancy; 2) sharing in the toddler years was positively predicted by infants' initiating joint attention. These results lend support to proposals on the multidimensional nature of early prosocial behavior and offer the first longitudinal evidence that the origins of toddlers' prosocial behavior can be traced to social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wyntre Stout
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
| | - Erin Karahuta
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
| | - Deborah Laible
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
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15
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Vouloumanos A, Yamashiro A. Building a Communication System in Infancy. MINNESOTA SYMPOSIA ON CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 2021. [DOI: 10.1002/9781119684527.ch2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
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16
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Strid K, Meristo M. Infants Consider the Distributor's Intentions in Resource Allocation. Front Psychol 2020; 11:596213. [PMID: 33192941 PMCID: PMC7661776 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.596213] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2020] [Accepted: 09/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent experimental studies suggest that preverbal infants are able to evaluate agents on the basis of their distributive actions. Here we asked whether such evaluations are based on infants' understanding of the distributors' intentions, or only the outcome of their actions. Ten-month-old infants observed animated movies of unequal resource allocations by distributors who attempted but failed to distribute resources equally or unequally between two individuals. We found that infants attended longer to the test event showing a third agent approaching a distributor who was unable to make an unequal distribution, compared to the test event where the third agent approached a distributor who was unable to make an equal distribution of resources. Our results suggest that infants' ability to encode distributive actions goes beyond an analysis of the outcome of these actions, by including the intentions of the distributors whose actions lead to these outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karin Strid
- Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
| | - Marek Meristo
- Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
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17
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Brandone AC, Stout W, Moty K. Intentional action processing across the transition to crawling: Does the experience of self-locomotion impact infants' understanding of intentional actions? Infant Behav Dev 2020; 60:101470. [PMID: 32712566 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101470] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2019] [Revised: 07/13/2020] [Accepted: 07/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Motor developmental milestones in infancy, such as the transition to self-locomotion, have cascading implications for infants' social and cognitive development. The current studies aimed to add to this literature by exploring whether and how crawling experience impacts a key social-cognitive milestone achieved in infancy: the development of intentional action understanding. Study 1 used a cross-sectional, age-held-constant design to examine whether locomotor (n = 36) and prelocomotor (n = 36) infants differ in their ability to process a failed intentional reaching action. Study 2 (n = 124) further probed this question by assessing how variability in locomotor infants' experience maps onto variability in their failed intentional action understanding. Both studies also assessed infants' tendency to engage in triadic interactions to shed light on whether self-locomotion impacts intentional action understanding directly or indirectly via changes in infants' interactions with social partners. Altogether, results showed no evidence for the role of self-locomotion in the development of intentional action understanding. Locomotor and prelocomotor infants did not differ in their failed action understanding or levels of triadic engagement (Study 1) and individual differences in days of crawling experience, propensity to crawl during play, and maximum crawling speed failed to predict infants' intentional action understanding or triadic engagement (Study 2). Explanations for these null findings and alternative influences on the development of intentional action understanding are considered.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Wyntre Stout
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, United States
| | - Kelsey Moty
- Department of Psychology, New York University, United States
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18
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Inference of Other’s Minds with Limited Information in Evolutionary Robotics. Int J Soc Robot 2020. [DOI: 10.1007/s12369-020-00660-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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19
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Krogh-Jespersen S, Henderson AME, Woodward AL. Let's get it together: Infants generate visual predictions based on collaborative goals. Infant Behav Dev 2020; 59:101446. [PMID: 32325310 PMCID: PMC7299182 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101446] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/06/2019] [Revised: 03/23/2020] [Accepted: 03/24/2020] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
Infants engage in social interactions that include multiple partners from very early in development. A growing body of research shows that infants visually predict the outcomes of an individual's intentional actions, such as a person reaching towards an object (e.g., Krogh-Jespersen & Woodward, 2014), and even show sophistication in their predictions regarding failed actions (e.g., Brandone, Horwitz, Aslin, & Wellman, 2014). Less is known about infants' understanding of actions involving more than one individual (e.g., collaborative actions), which require representing each partners' actions in light of the shared goal. Using eye-tracking, Study 1 examined whether 14-month-old infants visually predict the actions of an individual based on her previously shared goal. Infants viewed videos of two women engaged in either a collaborative or noncollaborative interaction. At test, only one woman was present and infants' visual predictions regarding her future actions were measured. Fourteen-month-olds anticipated an individual's future actions based on her past collaborative behavior. Study 2 revealed that 11-month-old infants only visually predict higher-order shared goals after engaging in a collaborative intervention. Together, our results indicate that by the second year after birth, infants perceive others' collaborative actions as structured by shared goals and that active engagement in collaboration strengthens this understanding in young infants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sheila Krogh-Jespersen
- Department of Medical Social Science, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60614, United States.
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20
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Reschke PJ, Walle EA, Dukes D. Did you mean to do that? Infants use emotional communication to infer and re-enact others' intended actions. Cogn Emot 2020; 34:1473-1479. [PMID: 32216540 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2020.1745760] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Infants readily re-enact others' intended actions during the second year of life. However, the role of emotion in appreciating others' intentions and how this understanding develops in infancy remains unstudied. In the present study, 15- and 18-month-old infants observed an experimenter repeatedly attempt but fail to produce a target action on an object and express either frustration or neutral affect after each attempt. Analyses of infants' responses revealed that 18-month-old infants, but not 15-month-olds, produced more target actions in the frustration condition than the neutral condition. These results suggest that infants use emotional communication to disambiguate and re-enact others' intended actions and that this ability develops in the second year of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter J Reschke
- School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.,Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA, USA
| | - Eric A Walle
- Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA, USA
| | - Daniel Dukes
- Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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21
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Ganglmayer K, Attig M, Daum MM, Paulus M. Infants’ perception of goal-directed actions: A multi-lab replication reveals that infants anticipate paths and not goals. Infant Behav Dev 2019; 57:101340. [DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.101340] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2018] [Revised: 03/22/2019] [Accepted: 07/10/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
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22
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Brandone AC, Stout W, Moty K. Triadic interactions support infants' emerging understanding of intentional actions. Dev Sci 2019; 23:e12880. [PMID: 31206980 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12880] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2018] [Revised: 06/06/2019] [Accepted: 06/08/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Infants' understanding of the intentional nature of human action develops gradually across the first year of life. A key question is what mechanisms drive changes in this foundational social-cognitive ability. The current studies explored the hypothesis that triadic interactions in which infants coordinate attention between a social partner and an object of mutual interest promote infants' developing understanding of others as intentional agents. Infants' spontaneous tendency to participate in triadic engagement was assessed in a semi-structured play session with a researcher. Intentional action understanding was assessed by evaluating infants' ability to visually predict the goal of an intentional reaching action. Study 1 (N = 88) revealed that 8- to 9-month-olds who displayed more bouts of triadic engagement showed better concurrent reasoning about the goal of an intentional reaching action. Study 2 (N = 114) confirmed these findings using a longitudinal design and demonstrated that infants who displayed more bouts of triadic engagement at 6-7 months were better at prospectively reasoning about the goal of an intentional reaching action 3 months later. Cross-lagged path analyses revealed that intentional action understanding at 6-7 months did not predict later triadic engagement, suggesting that early triadic engagement supports later intentional action processing and not the other way around. Finally, evidence from both studies revealed the unique contribution of triadic over dyadic forms of engagement. These results highlight the importance of social interaction as a developmental mechanism and suggest that infants enrich their understanding of intentionality through triadic interactions with social partners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amanda C Brandone
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
| | - Wyntre Stout
- Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
| | - Kelsey Moty
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York
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23
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ERPs reveal perceptual and conceptual processing in 14-month-olds' observation of complete and incomplete action end-states. Neuropsychologia 2019; 126:102-112. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.10.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2017] [Revised: 10/17/2017] [Accepted: 10/19/2017] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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24
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Yamashiro A, Vouloumanos A. How do infants and adults process communicative events in real time? J Exp Child Psychol 2018; 173:268-283. [PMID: 29772454 PMCID: PMC6104386 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.04.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2017] [Revised: 04/04/2018] [Accepted: 04/18/2018] [Indexed: 10/16/2022]
Abstract
Speech allows humans to communicate and to navigate the social world. By 12 months, infants recognize that speech elicits appropriate responses from others. However, it is unclear how infants process dynamic communicative scenes and how their processing abilities compare with those of adults. Do infants, like adults, process communicative events while the event is occurring or only after being presented with the outcome? We examined 12-month-olds' and adults' eye movements as they watched a Communicator grasp one (target) of two objects. During the test event, the Communicator could no longer reach the objects, so she spoke or coughed to a Listener, who selected either object. Infants' and adults' patterns of looking to the actors and objects revealed that both groups immediately evaluated the Communicator's speech, but not her cough, as communicative and recognized that the Listener should select the target object only when the Communicator spoke. Furthermore, infants and adults shifted their attention between the actors and the objects in very similar ways. This suggests that 12-month-olds can quickly process communicative events as they occur with adult-like accuracy. However, differences in looking reveal that 12-month-olds process slower than adults. This early developing processing ability may allow infants to learn language and acquire knowledge from communicative interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amy Yamashiro
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
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25
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Mitsven SG, Cantrell LM, Luck SJ, Oakes LM. Visual short-term memory guides infants' visual attention. Cognition 2018; 177:189-197. [PMID: 29704857 PMCID: PMC5975244 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.04.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2017] [Revised: 04/08/2018] [Accepted: 04/19/2018] [Indexed: 10/17/2022]
Abstract
Adults' visual attention is guided by the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here we asked whether 10-month-old infants' (N = 41) visual attention is also guided by the information stored in VSTM. In two experiments, we modified the one-shot change detection task (Oakes, Baumgartner, Barrett, Messenger, & Luck, 2013) to create a simplified cued visual search task to ask how information stored in VSTM influences where infants look. A single sample item (e.g., a colored circle) was presented at fixation for 500 ms, followed by a brief (300 ms) retention interval and then a test array consisting of two items, one on each side of fixation. One item in the test array matched the sample stimulus and the other did not. Infants were more likely to look at the non-matching item than at the matching item, demonstrating that the information stored rapidly in VSTM guided subsequent looking behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samantha G Mitsven
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, United States
| | - Lisa M Cantrell
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, United States
| | - Steven J Luck
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, United States; Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, United States
| | - Lisa M Oakes
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, United States; Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, United States.
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26
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Miller PH, Aloise-Young PA. Revisiting Young Children's Understanding of the Psychological Causes of Behavior. Child Dev 2017; 89:1441-1461. [PMID: 28661004 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12891] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
In 1989, Miller and Aloise challenged the prevailing belief that preschoolers tend to explain others' behavior in terms of external events or a person's physical attributes and have little understanding of psychological causes. That review documented preschoolers' understanding of, and even preference for, psychological causes as part of an emerging renaissance in developmental social-cognitive research. The present, updated review (97 articles, participant ages 3 months to 6 years) suggests the emergence of a transformative new perspective in which social-cognition is balanced between social and cognitive aspects rather than tilted toward cognition. Recent research on infants' awareness of mental states, young children's understanding of social categories and their judgments of the trustworthiness of informants, and cultural context reveals various ways in which preschoolers' social-causal reasoning is social.
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27
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Reschke PJ, Walle EA, Dukes D. Interpersonal Development in Infancy: The Interconnectedness of Emotion Understanding and Social Cognition. CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES 2017. [DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12230] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Daniel Dukes
- University of Neuchâtel
- University of Geneva
- University of California, Berkeley
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28
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Havy M, Waxman SR. Naming influences 9-month-olds' identification of discrete categories along a perceptual continuum. Cognition 2016; 156:41-51. [PMID: 27501225 PMCID: PMC5122455 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.07.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2015] [Revised: 07/23/2016] [Accepted: 07/25/2016] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of evidence documents that naming guides 9-month-old infants as they organize their visual experiences into categories. In particular, this evidence reveals that naming highlights categories when these are visually distinct. Here we advance this work in by introducing an anticipatory looking design to assess how naming influences infants' categorization of objects that vary along a perceptual continuum. We introduced 9-month-old infants (n = 48) to continua of novel creature-like objects. During the learning phase, infants had an opportunity to observe that objects from one end of the perceptual continuum moved to the left and objects from the other end moved to the right. What varied was how the objects were named. Infants in theone-name condition heard the same novel noun applied to all objects along the continuum; those in the two-name condition heard one name for objects from one end of the continuum and a second name for objects at the other end. At test, all infants viewed new objects from the same continuum. At issue was whether infants would anticipate the side to which the test objects would move and whether their expectations varied as a function of naming condition. Infants in the one-name condition formed a single overarching category and therefore searched for new test objects at either location; those in the two-name condition discerned two categories and therefore correctly anticipated the likely location of the test objects, whether these were close to the poles or to the center of the continuum. This provides the first evidence that by 9 months, naming supports both the number of categories infants impose along a perceptual continuum and the clarity of the category boundaries.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mélanie Havy
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, United States; Department of Psychology, Université de Genève, Switzerland.
| | - Sandra R Waxman
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, United States
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29
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Green D, Li Q, Lockman JJ, Gredebäck G. Culture Influences Action Understanding in Infancy: Prediction of Actions Performed With Chopsticks and Spoons in Chinese and Swedish Infants. Child Dev 2016; 87:736-46. [DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12500] [Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Qi Li
- Qinghai Normal University
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30
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Daum MM, Wronski C, Harms A, Gredebäck G. Action perception in infancy: the plasticity of 7-month-olds' attention to grasping actions. Exp Brain Res 2016; 234:2465-78. [PMID: 27093869 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-016-4651-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2015] [Accepted: 04/11/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
The present study investigates the plasticity of 7-month-old infants' orienting of attention during their perception of grasping actions. Previous research has shown that when infants observe a grasping hand, they shift their attention in line with the grasping direction, which is indicated by a reliable priming effect in this direction. The mechanisms behind this priming effect are largely unknown, and it is unclear how malleable this priming effect is with respect to a brief exposure to novel action-target contingencies. In a spatial-cueing paradigm, we presented a series of training trials prior to a series of test trials. These training sequences significantly modulated infants' attention. This suggests that action perception, when assessed through shifts of attention, is not solely based on the infants' grasping experience but quickly adapts to context-specific observed regularities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Moritz M Daum
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 21, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland. .,Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Caroline Wronski
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 21, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland.,Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.,University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Annekatrin Harms
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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31
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Robson SJ, Kuhlmeier VA. Infants' Understanding of Object-Directed Action: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis. Front Psychol 2016; 7:111. [PMID: 26903918 PMCID: PMC4746616 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2015] [Accepted: 01/20/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recognizing that the object-directed actions of others are governed by goals and intentions is a crucial component of human interaction. These actions often occur rapidly and without explanation, yet we learn from and predict the actions of others with remarkable speed and accuracy, even during the first year of life. This review paper will serve as a bridge between several disparate literatures that, we suggest, can each contribute to our understanding of how infants interpret action. Specifically, we provide a review not just of research on infant goal attribution per se, but also incorporate findings from studies on the mirror neuron system and infant object cognition. The integration of these various research approaches allows for a novel construal of the extents and limits of early goal attribution – one in which the importance of the entire action context is considered – and points to specific future research directions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott J Robson
- Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University Kingston, ON, Canada
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32
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Moskowitz GB, Olcaysoy Okten I. Spontaneous Goal Inference (SGI). SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY COMPASS 2016. [DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12232] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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33
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Affiliation(s)
- Renée Baillargeon
- Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois 61820; ,
| | - Rose M. Scott
- Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, California 95343;
| | - Lin Bian
- Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois 61820; ,
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34
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Abstract
An important element in social interactions is predicting the goals of others, including the goals of others' manual actions. Over a decade ago, Flanagan and Johansson demonstrated that, when observing other people reaching for objects, the observer's gaze arrives at the goal before the action is completed. Moreover, those authors proposed that this behavior was mediated by an embodied process, which takes advantage of the observer's motor knowledge. Here, we scrutinize work that has followed that seminal article. We include studies on adults that have used combined eye tracking and transcranial magnetic stimulation technologies to test causal hypotheses about underlying brain circuits. We also include developmental studies on human infants. We conclude that, although several aspects of the embodied process of predictive eye movements remain to be clarified, current evidence strongly suggests that the motor system plays a causal role in guiding predictive gaze shifts that focus on another person's future goal. The early emergence of the predictive gaze in infant development underlines its importance for social cognition and interaction.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Terje Falck-Ytter
- Department of Psychology, Uppsala University Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet
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35
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Krogh-Jespersen S, Liberman Z, Woodward AL. Think fast! The relationship between goal prediction speed and social competence in infants. Dev Sci 2015; 18:815-23. [PMID: 25659980 PMCID: PMC4522199 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12249] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2013] [Accepted: 08/18/2014] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Skilled social interactions require knowledge about others' intentions and the ability to implement this knowledge in real-time to generate appropriate responses to one's partner. Young infants demonstrate an understanding of other people's intentions (e.g. Woodward, Sommerville, Gerson, Henderson & Buresh, 2009), yet it is not until the second year that infants seem to master the real-time implementation of their knowledge during social interactions (e.g. Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). The current study investigates the possibility that developments in social competence during the second year are related to increases in the speed with which infants can employ their understanding of others' intentions. Twenty- to 22-month-old infants (N = 23) viewed videos of goal-directed actions on a Tobii eye-tracker and then engaged in an interactive perspective-taking task. Infants who quickly and accurately anticipated another person's future behavior in the eye-tracking task were more successful at taking their partner's perspective in the social interaction. Success on the perspective-taking task was specifically related to the ability to correctly predict another person's intentions. These findings highlight the importance of not only being a 'smart' social partner but also a 'fast' social thinker.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Zoe Liberman
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA
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36
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Infant capacities related to building internal working models of attachment figures: A theoretical and empirical review. DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW 2015. [DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2015.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
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37
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Krogh-Jespersen S, Woodward AL. Making smart social judgments takes time: infants' recruitment of goal information when generating action predictions. PLoS One 2014; 9:e98085. [PMID: 24835053 PMCID: PMC4024033 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098085] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/14/2014] [Accepted: 04/29/2014] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous research has shown that young infants perceive others' actions as structured by goals. One open question is whether the recruitment of this understanding when predicting others' actions imposes a cognitive challenge for young infants. The current study explored infants' ability to utilize their knowledge of others' goals to rapidly predict future behavior in complex social environments and distinguish goal-directed actions from other kinds of movements. Fifteen-month-olds (N = 40) viewed videos of an actor engaged in either a goal-directed (grasping) or an ambiguous (brushing the back of her hand) action on a Tobii eye-tracker. At test, critical elements of the scene were changed and infants' predictive fixations were examined to determine whether they relied on goal information to anticipate the actor's future behavior. Results revealed that infants reliably generated goal-based visual predictions for the grasping action, but not for the back-of-hand behavior. Moreover, response latencies were longer for goal-based predictions than for location-based predictions, suggesting that goal-based predictions are cognitively taxing. Analyses of areas of interest indicated that heightened attention to the overall scene, as opposed to specific patterns of attention, was the critical indicator of successful judgments regarding an actor's future goal-directed behavior. These findings shed light on the processes that support “smart” social behavior in infants, as it may be a challenge for young infants to use information about others' intentions to inform rapid predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sheila Krogh-Jespersen
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
- * E-mail:
| | - Amanda L. Woodward
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
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