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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 7, 2026

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

Infants help a non-human agent.

Ben Kenward1, Gustaf Gredebäck

  • 1Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.

Plos One
|September 24, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Young children exhibit helping behaviors even towards non-human agents, suggesting early empathy doesn't require human-like features. This indicates helping tendencies may stem from broader mechanisms beyond direct mirroring.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Comparative Psychology

Background:

  • Young children's helping behaviors are often linked to empathy and sympathetic concern.
  • Existing theories suggest direct-matching mirror-system mechanisms underlie empathy-based helping in adults.
  • These mechanisms struggle to explain helping towards non-human agents lacking human-like features.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the underlying mechanisms of empathy-based helping in 17-month-old infants.
  • To determine if helping behaviors towards non-human agents depend on direct-matching mechanisms.
  • To explore alternative explanations for infant helping, such as goal contagion.

Main Methods:

  • 17-month-old infants observed a ball-shaped agent attempting to reach a goal but being blocked by a barrier.
  • Infants were given opportunities to help the agent overcome the obstacle.
  • A control condition was used where the barrier did not impede the agent's progress.

Main Results:

  • Infants actively helped the agent by lifting it over the barrier.
  • Helping actions were significantly less frequent when the barrier was not perceived as an impediment.
  • This suggests direct-matching is not a prerequisite for motivating infant helping.

Conclusions:

  • Early helping tendencies in infants do not solely rely on human-specific, direct-matching mechanisms.
  • Empathy-based mechanisms not requiring direct-matching are a plausible explanation for infant helping.
  • Alternatively, goal contagion, where infants adopt the agent's unfulfilled goal, could also drive helping behavior.