Goal certainty modulates infants' goal-directed gaze shifts
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Updated: May 12, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Ivanina Henrichs1, Claudia Elsner2, Birgit Elsner1
1Department of Psychology.
Insights
Twelve-month-old infants predict actions by assessing goal certainty. When actions are predictable, infants learn faster and predict goals more accurately, showing early inference skills.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Infant Perception
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Understanding how infants predict others' actions is crucial for cognitive development research.
- Previous studies suggest infants use various cues, but the role of goal certainty is less explored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if 12-month-old infants use goal selection certainty to predict observed reaching actions.
- To determine if infants' prediction accuracy and learning differ based on goal certainty.
Main Methods:
- Recorded infants' goal-directed gaze shifts while they observed reaching actions in a multiple-goals setup.
- Compared infant responses in frequent (consistent goal) versus nonfrequent (variable goal) conditions.
Main Results:
- Infants showed earlier gaze shifts in the frequent condition compared to the nonfrequent condition.
- Infants were more accurate in predicting action goals in the frequent condition.
- Rapid learning occurred with goal certainty, while uncertainty led to no learning.
Conclusions:
- By 12 months, infants utilize goal selection certainty to infer others' action goals.
- Infants' ability to predict actions is influenced by the predictability of goal selection.
- This highlights early-developing inferential reasoning in social cognition.
Abstract:
We investigated whether 12-month-old infants rely on information about the certainty of goal selection in order to predict observed reaching actions. Infants' goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed action sequences in a multiple-goals design. We found that 12-month-old infants exhibited gaze shifts significantly earlier when the observed hand reached for the same goal object in all trials (frequent condition) compared with when the observed hand reached for different goal objects across trials (nonfrequent condition). Infants in the frequent condition were significantly more accurate at predicting the action goal than infants in the nonfrequent condition. In addition, findings revealed rapid learning in the case of certainty and no learning in the case of uncertainty of goal selection over the course of trials. Together, our data indicate that by the end of their first year of life, infants rely on information about the certainty of goal selection to make inferences about others' action goals.
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