Infants' understanding of intention from 10 to 14 months: Interrelations among violation of expectancy and imitation

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Kara M Olineck1, Diane Poulin-Dubois

  • 1Department of Psychology, Concordia University, PY-170, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4B 1R6.

Infant Behavior & Development
|July 22, 2009
PubMed

Insights

Infants

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Cognitive science
  • Infant cognition

Background:

  • Understanding intentional actions is crucial for social development.
  • Previous research has explored infant abilities in visual attention and imitation separately.
  • The relationship between these two domains in early development remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the interrelation between infants' performance on visual attention and imitation tasks assessing understanding of intentional actions.
  • To examine developmental continuity in infants' understanding of intentional action from 10 to 14 months of age.

Main Methods:

  • Infants completed goal-detection and action-parsing tasks at 10 months.
  • At 14 months, infants performed behavioral re-enactment and selective action imitation tasks.
  • Tasks were designed to differentiate intentional from accidental actions.

Main Results:

  • Infants' performances on visual attention tasks at 10 months were interrelated.
  • No association was found between imitation tasks at 14 months.
  • Visual attention behaviors at 10 months predicted imitation task performance at 14 months.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' understanding of intentional action shows developmental continuity from 10 to 14 months.
  • Visual attention skills may underpin later imitation abilities in discerning intentionality.
  • This study provides novel insights into the early development of social cognition.

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