Related Experiment Videos
Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: understanding people and their actions
Maria Legerstee1, Joanne Barna, Carolyn DiAdamo
1York U.
Insights
Six-month-old infants differentiate between people and objects. They expect people
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Infant Psychology
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Understanding how infants perceive social interactions is crucial for developmental psychology.
- Early expectations about object and person interactions inform later social cognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether 6-month-old infants differentiate expectations of behavior towards persons versus inanimate objects.
- To explore the development of social expectations in early infancy.
Main Methods:
- Infants were habituated to an actor performing actions (talking, reaching/swiping) behind an occluder.
- Test events involved showing infants either a person or an object stimulus while the actor remained occluded.
- A control condition presented stimuli without prior habituation to actor actions.
Main Results:
- Infants habituated to talking looked longer at an object, suggesting object-directed expectations.
- Infants habituated to reaching/swiping looked longer at a person, indicating person-directed expectations.
- Control group showed no differential looking, validating experimental findings.
Conclusions:
- Six-month-old infants demonstrate distinct expectations for how people interact with objects versus other people.
- These findings suggest early precursors to mature intentional understandings of social interactions.
- Infant social cognition develops through differentiating animate and inanimate entities and their typical behaviors.
Abstract:
Under investigation was whether 6-month-old infants expect people to behave differently toward persons and inanimate objects. Infants were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. In the experimental conditions, infants were habituated to an actor who either talked to or reached for and swiped with something hidden behind an occluder. In the test events the actor was occluded, but the infants were shown either a person or an object. In the control condition, infants only saw the person or object stimulus. Results showed that infants who had been habituated to an actor who was talking looked longer at the object, and infants who had been habituated to an actor who was reaching and swiping looked longer at the person. No difference in looking at the stimuli was observed in the control condition. This suggests that infants expect people's actions to be related to objects in ways that are continuous with more mature, intentional understandings.