Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

The Nativist Approach01:21

The Nativist Approach

The nativist approach to infant cognitive development proposes that infants are born with inherent knowledge structures that allow them to interpret the world almost immediately. This perspective contrasts with earlier developmental theories, such as those proposed by Jean Piaget, which emphasized a more gradual acquisition of cognitive abilities through interaction with the environment. One key concept in this approach is object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to exist...
Relationship with Parents: Attachment01:28

Relationship with Parents: Attachment

Parent-child interactions lay the foundation for how we understand relationships throughout life. These interactions are not uniform across families; instead, they are shaped by a range of environmental, emotional, and behavioral factors unique to each caregiver-child dynamic. Social psychologists study these early relationships to understand how patterns formed in infancy influence social functioning and interpersonal behavior in adulthood.Attachment Theory and Early Relational ModelsJohn...
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...
Attachment01:20

Attachment

Attachment is vital for infant development, as warm social interactions support growth and well-being. In a classic 1958 study by Harry Harlow, the significance of warmth and comfort in forming attachments was examined. Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers and provided two artificial "mothers": one made of cold wire and the other covered in soft cloth. Despite the wire mother offering food, the infant monkeys preferred the comfort of the cloth mother, demonstrating that physical...
Socioemotional Development during Infancy01:30

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

Socio-emotional development in infancy is primarily shaped by early emotional responses and social connections, with temperament playing a central role. Temperament refers to the consistent patterns in an individual's emotional and behavioral responses, observable even in infancy. By examining temperament, researchers can better understand an infant's unique ways of interacting with the world, influencing subsequent personality and socio-emotional growth.
Primary Temperament Types
Stella Chess...
Introduction to Learning01:18

Introduction to Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills through practice or experience, leading to long-lasting behavioral changes. This acquisition occurs through interaction with the environment and requires practice or experience. For instance, mastering a skill such as surfing requires considerable practice and experience, highlighting the essential role of repeated interactions with the environment in learning.
In contrast to learned behaviors, unlearned behaviors such as crying, sexual...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

What 5000 babies can tell us about developing minds and how to study them.

Communications psychology·2026
Same author

Effects of parental intervention on children's English utterances and behavioral responses in video-based second language learning.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same author

Group-dependent selective forgetting in Arab-Israeli children.

Developmental psychology·2026
Same author

Interpersonal synchrony affects 18-month-olds' social alignment via self-other comparison.

Acta psychologica·2026
Same author

The Intriguingly Social N400 of Preverbal Infants.

Developmental neurobiology·2026
Same author

Measuring across modalities: Protophones as acoustic attention-getters in infant object communication.

Infant behavior & development·2026
Same journal

Investigating the origins of partisanship: What motivates children to preferentially endorse their ingroups' claims?

Cognition·2026
Same journal

People make graded judgments about the inconceivable.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

The self as an image: Appearance and belief in visual representations of one's own face.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Corrigendum to 'Consonant, vowel, and tone cues in early wordform recognition: Evidence from Cantonese-learning infants' [Cognition 275 (2026) 106624].

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Identifying distinct sources of whole number interference in children's decimal comparison: the role of numerical magnitude and inhibitory control.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Evidence for abstract spatial concept learning in young animals.

Cognition·2026
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 8, 2026

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants
11:14

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

Do infants bind mental states to agents?

Dora Kampis1, Eszter Somogyi, Shoji Itakura

  • 1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, POB 398, 1394 Budapest, Hungary; Department of Cognitive Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Izabella utca 46, 1064 Budapest, Hungary.

Cognition
|August 15, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Infants learn general object information rather than agent-specific preferences. Early theory of mind may not bind beliefs to individuals, facilitating broader knowledge acquisition.

Keywords:
Action perceptionBelief attributionInfantsPreferential choice

More Related Videos

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 8, 2026

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants
11:14

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Infant Cognition

Background:

  • Infants understand others' preferential choices and interpret actions based on others' perspectives.
  • The prevailing view is that infants perceive preferential choice as an agent's dispositional state.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether infants encode others' perspectives as person-specific knowledge or acquire general information.
  • To explore the binding of belief content to the belief holder in early theory of mind.

Main Methods:

  • A looking-time study was conducted with infants.
  • An agent (Agent A) demonstrated a preferential choice based on their perspective.
  • A second agent (Agent B) then acted consistently or inconsistently with Agent A, with variations in Agent B's age.

Main Results:

  • Infants expected Agent B to choose as Agent A did, but only when Agent A's knowledge implied a contrastive choice.
  • This expectation held true regardless of whether Agent B was an adult or a child.

Conclusions:

  • Infants appear to learn general object information rather than an agent's specific disposition.
  • Early theory of mind processes might lack the binding of belief content to the belief holder, enabling universal access to information.