Teleological reasoning in 4-month-old infants: pupil dilations and contextual constraints

Infants are sensitive to the social signaling value of shared inefficient behaviors

Actions that are blatantly inefficient to achieve non-social goals are often used to convey information about agents' social affiliation, as in the case of rituals. We argue that when reproduced, actions that are individually inefficient acquire a social signaling value owing to the mechanisms that support humans' intuitive analysis of actions. We tested our hypothesis on 15-month-old infants who were familiarized with an agent that reproduced or merely observed the actions of efficient and inefficient individuals. Subsequently, we measured the infants' expectations of the agent's preferences for efficient and inefficient individuals. Our results confirmed that when agents act alone, infants expect a third-party to prefer efficient over inefficient agents. However, this pattern is entirely flipped if the third-party reproduces the agents' actions. In that case, infants expect inefficient agents to be preferred over efficient ones. Thus, reproducing actions whose rational basis is elusive can serve a critical social signaling function, accounting for why such behaviors are pervasive in human groups.

The pupil collaboration: A multi-lab, multi-method analysis of goal attribution in infants

The rise of pupillometry in infant research over the last decade is associated with a variety of methods for data preprocessing and analysis. Although pupil diameter is increasingly recognized as an alternative measure of the popular cumulative looking time approach used in many studies (Jackson & Sirois, 2022), an open question is whether the many approaches used to analyse this variable converge. To this end, we proposed a crowdsourced approach to pupillometry analysis. A dataset from 30 9-month-old infants (15 girls; Mage = 282.9 days, SD = 8.10) was provided to 7 distinct teams for analysis. The data were obtained from infants watching video sequences showing a hand, initially resting between two toys, grabbing one of them (after Woodward, 1998). After habituation, infants were shown (in random order) a sequence of four test events that varied target position and target toy. Results show that looking times reflect primarily the familiar path of the hand, regardless of target toy. Gaze data similarly show this familiarity effect of path. The pupil dilation analyses show that features of pupil baseline measures (duration and temporal location) as well as data retention variation (trial and/or participant) due to different inclusion criteria from the various analysis methods are linked to divergences in findings. Two of the seven teams found no significant findings, whereas the remaining five teams differ in the pattern of findings for main and interaction effects. The discussion proposes guidelines for best practice in the analysis of pupillometry data.

Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension

Recent work has investigated the origin of infant colour categories, showing pre-linguistic infants categorise colour even in the absence of colour words. These infant categories are similar but not identical to adult categories, giving rise to an important question about how infant colour perception changes with the learning of colour words. Here we present two novel paradigms in which 12- and 19-month-old participants learning English as their first language were assessed on their perception of colour, while data on their colour word comprehension were also collected. Results indicate that participants' perception of colours close to the colour category boundaries dramatically change after colour word learning. The results highlight the shift made from infant colour categories to adult-like linguistically mediated colour categories that accompanies colour word learning. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We aimed to test whether colour perception is linguistically mediated in infants. We used novel eye-tracking and pupillometry paradigms to test infant colour perception either side of learning colour words. Infants' discrimination of colour changes after learning colour words, suggesting a shift due to colour word learning. A shift from pre-linguistic colour representation to linguistically mediated colour representation is discussed.

Seven-months-old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Human body postures provide perceptual cues that can be used to discriminate and recognize emotions. It was previously found that 7-months-olds' fixation patterns discriminated fear from other emotion body expressions but it is not clear whether they also process the emotional content of those expressions. The emotional content of visual stimuli can increase arousal level resulting in pupil dilations. To provide evidence that infants also process the emotional content of expressions, we analyzed variations in pupil in response to emotion stimuli. Forty-eight 7-months-old infants viewed adult body postures expressing anger, fear, happiness and neutral expressions, while their pupil size was measured. There was a significant emotion effect between 1040 and 1640 ms after image onset, when fear elicited larger pupil dilations than neutral expressions. A similar trend was found for anger expressions. Our results suggest that infants have increased arousal to negative-valence body expressions. Thus, in combination with previous fixation results, the pupil data show that infants as young as 7-months can perceptually discriminate static body expressions and process the emotional content of those expressions. The results extend information about infant processing of emotion expressions conveyed through other means (e.g., faces).

Infant behavioural effects of smartphone interrupted parent-infant interaction

Infants are vulnerable to changes in the dyadic synchrony with their caregivers, as demonstrated in numerous experiments employing the still-face paradigm. The sudden lack of attunement causes infant stress reactions and the still-face literature have suggested potential long-term costs of this in terms of development of social, emotional and cognitive skills. Acknowledging the rapid technological development accompanied by altered practices in the parent-infant interaction, the current study investigates infant behavioural reactions in a similar experimental paradigm, manipulating parental responsiveness and sensitivity in a slightly different manner. In the current study, the parent interrupts the ongoing interaction, simulating occupation with a smartphone, rather than making a 'still-face'. In a cross-sectional design, infants of six, nine and twelve months display increased levels of protest behaviour in response to the interrupted interaction with their parent, together with lowered levels of positive engagement and social monitoring, suggesting similar behavioural responses as the still-face effect. Implications for infant social and emotional development, as well as for mindful tech habits are discussed.

The role of social signals in segmenting observed actions in 18-month-old children

Learning about actions requires children to identify the boundaries of an action and its units. Whereas some action units are easily identified, parents can support children's action learning by adjusting the presentation and using social signals. However, currently, little is understood regarding how children use these signals to learn actions. In the current study, we investigate the possibility that communicative signals are a particularly suitable cue for segmenting events. We investigated this hypothesis by presenting 18-month-old children (N = 60) with short action sequences consisting of toy animals either hopping or sliding across a board into a house, but interrupting this two-step sequence either (a) using an ostensive signal as a segmentation cue, (b) using a non-ostensive segmentation cue and (c) without additional segmentation information between the actions. Marking the boundary using communicative signals increased children's imitation of the less salient sliding action. Imitation of the hopping action remained unaffected. Crucially, marking the boundary of both actions using a non-communicative control condition did not increase imitation of either action. Communicative signals might be particularly suitable in segmenting non-salient actions that would otherwise be perceived as part of another action or as non-intentional. These results provide evidence of the importance of ostensive signals at event boundaries in scaffolding children's learning.

Reasons Things Happen for a Reason: An Integrative Theory of Teleology

Humans default to functions and purposes when asked to explain the existence of mysterious phenomena. Our penchant for teleological reasoning is associated with good outcomes, such as finding meaning in misfortune, but also with bad outcomes, such as dangerous conspiracy theories and misunderstood scientific ideas, both of which pose important social and health problems. Psychological research into the teleological default has long alluded to Daniel Dennett's intentional-systems theory but has not fully engaged with the three intellectual stances at its core (intentional, design, physical). This article distinguishes the intentional stance from the design stance, which untangles some of the present knots in theories of teleology, accounts for diverse forms of teleology, and enhances predictions of when teleological reasoning is more likely to occur. This article examines the evidence for a teleological default considering Dennett's intentional-systems theory, proposes a process model, and clarifies current theoretical debates. It argues that people rationally and often thoughtfully use teleological reasoning in relation to both cognitive and social psychological factors. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

Children do not distinguish efficient from inefficient actions during observation

Observation is a powerful way to learn efficient actions from others. However, the role of observers' motor skill in assessing efficiency of others is unknown. Preschoolers are notoriously poor at performing multi-step actions like grasping the handle of a tool. Preschoolers (N = 22) and adults (N = 22) watched video-recorded actors perform efficient and inefficient tool use. Eye tracking showed that preschoolers and adults looked equally long at the videos, but adults looked longer than children at how actors grasped the tool. Deep learning analyses of participants' eye gaze distinguished efficient from inefficient grasps for adults, but not for children. Moreover, only adults showed differential action-related pupil dilation and neural activity (suppressed oscillation power in the mu frequency) while observing efficient vs. inefficient grasps. Thus, children observe multi-step actions without "seeing" whether the initial step is efficient. Findings suggest that observer's own motor efficiency determines whether they can perceive action efficiency in others.

Does surprise enhance infant memory? Assessing the impact of the encoding context on subsequent object recognition

A discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed has been linked to increased looking times, changes in brain electrical activity, and increased pupil dilation in infants. These processes associated with heightened attention and readiness to learn might enhance the encoding and memory consolidation of the surprising object, as suggested by both the infant and the adult literature. We therefore investigated whether the presence of surprise during the encoding context enhances subsequent encoding and recognition memory processes for the items that violated infants' expectations. Seventeen-month-olds viewed 20 familiar objects, half of which were labeled correctly, while the other half were mislabeled. Subsequently, infants were presented with a silent recognition memory test where the previously labeled objects appeared along with new images. Pupil dilation was measured, with more dilated pupils indicating (1) surprise during those labeling events where the item was mislabeled and (2) successful retrieval processes during the memory test. Infants responded with more pupil dilation to mislabeling compared to correct labeling. Importantly, despite the presence of a surprise response during mislabeling, infants only differentiated between the previously seen and unseen items at the memory test, offering no evidence that surprise had facilitated the encoding of the mislabeled items.

The teleological stance: Past, present, and future

We review the support for, and criticisms of, the teleological stance theory, often described as a foundation for goal-directed action understanding early in life. A major point of contention in the literature has been how teleological processes and assumptions of rationality are represented and understood in infancy, and this debate has been largely centered on three paradigms. Visual habituation studies assess infant's abilities to retrospectively assess teleological processes; the presence of such processes is supported by the literature. Rational imitation is a phenomenon that has been questioned both theoretically and empirically, and there is currently little support for this concept in the literature. The involvement of teleological processes in action prediction is unclear. To date, the ontology of teleological processes remains unspecified. To remedy this, we present a new action-based theory of teleological processes (here referred to as the embodied account of teleological processes), based on the development of goal-directed reaching with its origin during the fetal period and continuous development over the first few months of life.

Illuminating the Dark Ages: Pupil Dilation as a Measure of Expectancy Violation Across the Life Span

Mainly for methodological reasons, little is known about the course of development of early cognitive competencies diagnosed with the violation of expectation (VoE) method in infants. The goal of this research was to evaluate the use of pupillometry as a unified approach to assess expectancy violations during and beyond the "dark ages" between 1 and 3 years. We tested children aged 1-6 years and adults (N = 279) with pictures of animals combined with matching or mismatching animal sounds. All age groups exhibited significantly greater pupil dilation in mismatched than matched trials. We conclude that pupillometry is a viable alternative to the VoE method that, by contrast to the latter, can be used throughout the life span.

Gestures convey different physiological responses when performed toward and away from the body

We assessed the sympathetic and parasympathetic activation associated to the observation of Pantomime (i.e. the mime of the use of a tool) and Intransitive gestures (i.e. expressive) performed toward (e.g. a comb and “thinking”) and away from the body (e.g. key and “come here”) in a group of healthy participants while both pupil dilation (N = 31) and heart rate variability (N = 33; HF-HRV) were recorded. Large pupil dilation was observed in both Pantomime and Intransitive gestures toward the body; whereas an increase of the vagal suppression was observed in Intransitive gestures away from the body but not in those toward the body. Our results suggest that the space where people act when performing a gesture has an impact on the physiological responses of the observer in relation to the type of social communicative information that the gesture direction conveys, from a more intimate (toward the body) to a more interactive one (away from the body).

Young children integrate current observations, priors and agent information to predict others' actions

From early on in life, children are able to use information from their environment to form predictions about events. For instance, they can use statistical information about a population to predict the sample drawn from that population and infer an agent’s preferences from systematic violations of random sampling. We investigated whether and how young children infer an agent’s sampling biases. Moreover, we examined whether pupil data of toddlers follow the predictions of a computational model based on the causal Bayesian network formalization of predictive processing. We formalized three hypotheses about how different explanatory variables (i.e., prior probabilities, current observations, and agent characteristics) are used to predict others’ actions. We measured pupillary responses as a behavioral marker of ‘prediction errors’ (i.e., the perceived mismatch between what one’s model of an agent predicts and what the agent actually does). Pupillary responses of 24-month-olds, but not 18-month-olds, showed that young children integrated information about current observations, priors and agents to make predictions about agents and their actions. These findings shed light on the mechanisms behind toddlers’ inferences about agent-caused events. To our knowledge, this is the first study in which young children's pupillary responses are used as markers of prediction errors, which were qualitatively compared to the predictions by a computational model based on the causal Bayesian network formalization of predictive processing.

The Role of Callous-Unemotional Traits on Adolescent Positive and Negative Emotional Reactivity: A Longitudinal Community-Based Study

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with lower emotional reactivity in adolescents. However, since previous studies have focused mainly on reactivity to negative stimuli, it is unclear whether reactivity to positive stimuli is also affected. Further, few studies have addressed the link between CU traits and emotional reactivity in longitudinal community samples, which is important for determining its generalizability and developmental course. In the current study, pupil dilation and self-ratings of arousal and valence were assessed in 100 adolescents (15-17 years) from a community sample, while viewing images with negative and positive valence from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). Behavioral traits (CU) were assessed concurrently, as well as at ages 12-15, and 8-9 (subsample, n = 68, low levels of prosocial behavior were used as a proxy for CU traits). The results demonstrate that CU traits assessed at ages 12-15 and 8-9 predicted less pupil dilation to both positive and negative images at ages 15-17. Further, CU traits at ages 12-15 and concurrently were associated with less negative valence ratings for negative images and concurrently to less positive valence ratings for positive images. The current findings demonstrate that CU traits are related to lower emotional reactivity to both negative and positive stimuli in adolescents from a community sample.

The Immersive Virtual Reality Lab: Possibilities for Remote Experimental Manipulations of Autonomic Activity on a Large Scale

There is a need for large-scale remote data collection in a controlled environment, and the in-home availability of virtual reality (VR) and the commercial availability of eye tracking for VR present unique and exciting opportunities for researchers. We propose and provide a proof-of-concept assessment of a robust system for large-scale in-home testing using consumer products that combines psychophysiological measures and VR, here referred to as a Virtual Lab. For the first time, this method is validated by correlating autonomic responses, skin conductance response (SCR), and pupillary dilation, in response to a spider, a beetle, and a ball using commercially available VR. Participants demonstrated greater SCR and pupillary responses to the spider, and the effect was dependent on the proximity of the stimuli to the participant, with a stronger response when the spider was close to the virtual self. We replicated these effects across two experiments and in separate physical room contexts to mimic variability in home environment. Together, these findings demonstrate the utility of pupil dilation as a marker of autonomic arousal and the feasibility to assess this in commercially available VR hardware and support a robust Virtual Lab tool for massive remote testing.

Action Prediction Allows Hypothesis Testing via Internal Forward Models at 6 Months of Age

We propose that action prediction provides a cornerstone in a learning process known as internal forward models. According to this suggestion infants' predictions (looking to the mouth of someone moving a spoon upward) will moments later be validated or proven false (spoon was in fact directed toward a bowl), information that is directly perceived as the distance between the predicted and actual goal. Using an individual difference approach we demonstrate that action prediction correlates with the tendency to react with surprise when social interactions are not acted out as expected (action evaluation). This association is demonstrated across tasks and in a large sample (n = 118) at 6 months of age. These results provide the first indication that infants might rely on internal forward models to structure their social world. Additional analysis, consistent with prior work and assumptions from embodied cognition, demonstrates that the latency of infants' action predictions correlate with the infant's own manual proficiency.

Event-related potentials discriminate familiar and unusual goal outcomes in 5-month-olds and adults

Previous event-related potential (ERP) work has indicated that the neural processing of action sequences develops with age. Although adults and 9-month-olds use a semantic processing system, perceiving actions activates attentional processes in 7-month-olds. However, presenting a sequence of action context, action execution and action conclusion could challenge infants' developing working memory capacities. A shortened stimulus presentation of a highly familiar action, presenting only the action conclusion of an eating action, may therefore enable semantic processing in even younger infants. The present study examined neural correlates of the processing of expected and unexpected action conclusions in adults and infants at 5 months of age. We analyzed ERP components reflecting semantic processing (N400), attentional processes (negative central in infants; P1, N2 in adults) and the infant positive slow wave (PSW), a marker of familiarity. In infants, the PSW was enhanced on left frontal channels in response to unexpected as compared to the expected outcomes. We did not find differences between conditions in ERP waves reflecting semantic processing or overt attentional mechanisms. In adults, in addition to differences in attentional processes on the P1 and the N2, an N400 occurred only in response to the unexpected action outcome, suggesting semantic processing taking place even without a complete action sequence being present. Results indicate that infants are already sensitive to differences in action outcomes, although the underlying mechanism which is based on familiarity is relatively rudimentary when contrasted with adults. This finding points toward different cognitive mechanisms being involved in action processing during development. (PsycINFO Database Record

Novel paradigms to measure variability of behavior in early childhood: posture, gaze, and pupil dilation

A central challenge of investigating the underlying mechanisms of and the individual differences in young children's behavior is the measurement of the internal physiological mechanism and the involved expressive emotions. Here, we illustrate two paradigms that assess concurrent indicators of both children's social perception as well as their emotional expression. In one set of studies, children view situations while their eye movements are mapped onto a live scene. In these studies, children's internal arousal is measured via changes in their pupil dilation by using eye tracking technology. In another set of studies, we measured children's emotional expression via changes in their upper-body posture by using depth sensor imaging technology. Together, these paradigms can provide new insights into the internal mechanism and outward emotional expression involved in young children's behavior.

Pupillometry

Pupillometry is the study of changes in the diameter of the pupil as a function of cognitive processing. This review paper provides a brief historical overview of the study of pupillometry in cognitive science. The physiology of pupillary responses is introduced, leading to an outline of early pupillometry work, which began with the seminal work of Hess and Polt in the 1960s. The paper then presents a broad review of contemporary research in cognitive sciences that relies on pupillometry. This review is organized around five general domains, namely perception, language processing, memory and decision making, emotion and cognition, and cognitive development. In order to illustrate the nature of the method, and the challenges of analysis, the next section of the review details the process of compiling, processing, and analyzing data from a simple, typical pupillometry study. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:679-692. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1323 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.

Pupil diameter measurement errors as a function of gaze direction in corneal reflection eyetrackers

Pupil dilation is a useful, noninvasive technique for measuring the change in cognitive load. Since it is implicit and nonverbal, it is particularly useful with preverbal or nonverbal participants. In cognitive psychology, pupil dilation is most often measured by corneal reflection eye-tracking devices. The present study investigates the effect of gaze position on pupil size estimation by three common eye-tracking systems. The task consisted of a simple object pursuit situation, as a sphere rotated around the display screen. Systematic errors of pupil size estimation were found with all three systems. Implications for task-elicited pupillometry, especially for gaze-contingent studies such as object tracking or reading, are discussed.

Beyond rational imitation: learning arbitrary means actions from communicative demonstrations

The principle of rationality has been invoked to explain that infants expect agents to perform the most efficient means action to attain a goal. It has also been demonstrated that infants take into account the efficiency of observed actions to achieve a goal outcome when deciding whether to reenact a specific behavior or not. It is puzzling, however, that they also tend to imitate an apparently suboptimal unfamiliar action even when they can bring about the same outcome more efficiently by applying a more rational action alternative available to them. We propose that this apparently paradoxical behavior is explained by infants' interpretation of action demonstrations as communicative manifestations of novel and culturally relevant means actions to be acquired, and we present empirical evidence supporting this proposal. In Experiment 1, we found that 14-month-olds reenacted novel arbitrary means actions only following a communicative demonstration. Experiment 2 showed that infants' inclination to reproduce communicatively manifested novel actions is restricted to behaviors they can construe as goal-directed instrumental acts. The study also provides evidence that infants' reenactment of the demonstrated novel actions reflects epistemic motives rather than purely social motives. We argue that ostensive communication enables infants to represent the teleological structure of novel actions even when the causal relations between means and end are cognitively opaque and apparently violate the efficiency expectation derived from the principle of rationality. This new account of imitative learning of novel means shows how the teleological stance and natural pedagogy--two separate cognitive adaptations to interpret instrumental versus communicative actions--are integrated as a system for learning socially constituted instrumental knowledge in humans.

Examining implicit metacognition in 3.5-year-old children: an eye-tracking and pupillometric study

The current study examined early signs of implicit metacognitive monitoring in 3.5-year-old children. During a learning phase children had to learn paired associates. In the test phase, children performed a recognition task and choose the correct associate for a given target among four possible answers. Subsequently, children's explicit confidence judgments (CJs) and their fixation time allocation at the confidence scale were assessed. Analyses showed that explicit CJs did not differ for remembered compared to non-remembered items. In contrast, children's fixation patterns on the confidence scale were affected by the correctness of their memory, as children looked longer to high confidence ratings when they correctly remembered the associated item. Moreover, analyses of pupil size revealed pupil dilations for correctly remembered, but not incorrectly remembered items. The results converge with recent behavioral findings that reported evidence for implicit metacognitive memory monitoring processes in 3.5-year-old children. The study suggests that implicit metacognitive abilities might precede the development of explicit metacognitive knowledge.

Humans Anticipate the Goal of other People's Point-Light Actions

This eye tracking study investigated the degree to which biological motion information from manual point-light displays provides sufficient information to elicit anticipatory eye movements. We compared gaze performance of adults observing a biological motion point-light display of a hand reaching for a goal object or a non-biological version of the same event. Participants anticipated the goal of the point-light action in the biological motion condition but not in a non-biological control condition. The present study demonstrates that kinematic information from biological motion can be used to anticipate the goal of other people’s point-light actions and that the presence of biological motion is sufficient for anticipation to occur.