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Infants' perception of goal-directed actions: A multi-lab replication reveals that infants anticipate paths and not
Kerstin Ganglmayer1, Manja Attig2, Moritz M Daum3
1Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Insights
Infants do not flexibly anticipate action goals as previously thought. Instead, even 12-month-olds focus on movement paths rather than the intended goal when processing actions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Infant Perception
Background:
- Influential theories propose infants use goals for action anticipation.
- Prior research suggested 11-month-olds predict actions based on goals, even with object displacement.
- Conflicting findings exist regarding the age of flexible goal-directed anticipation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether infants flexibly anticipate action goals.
- To examine the influence of agent type (human vs. animated) on goal anticipation.
- To explore developmental changes in action anticipation from 11 months to adulthood.
Main Methods:
- Two studies conducted across two labs with a total of 248 participants (11-month-olds, 12-month-olds, 32-month-olds, and adults).
- Study 1 used five experiments with 12-month-olds and varied agent types.
- Study 2 presented 11-month-olds, 32-month-olds, and adults with human and non-human grasping actions, including a replication attempt.
Main Results:
- Infants did not flexibly anticipate actions based on goals in any experiment.
- Participants of all ages attended to movement paths, not the action goal, irrespective of agent type.
- A direct replication of Cannon and Woodward (2012) was unsuccessful.
Conclusions:
- The findings challenge the notion that infants possess early, flexible goal-based action anticipation.
- Infants appear to rely on movement patterns rather than goals when processing actions.
- Further research is needed to understand the development of goal-directed action processing.
Abstract:
Influential developmental theories claim that infants rely on goals when visually anticipating actions. A widely noticed study suggested that 11-month-olds anticipate that a hand continues to grasp the same object even when it swapped position with another object (Cannon, E., & Woodward, A. L. (2012). Infants generate goal-based action predictions. Developmental Science, 15, 292-298.). Yet, other studies found such flexible goal-directed anticipations only from later ages on. Given the theoretical relevance of this phenomenon and given these contradicting findings, the current work investigated in two different studies and labs, whether infants indeed flexibly anticipate an action goal. Study 1 (N = 144) investigated by means of five experiments, under which circumstances (e.g., animated agent, human agent) 12-month-olds show flexible goal anticipation abilities. Study 2 (N = 104) presented 11-, 32-month-olds and adults both a human grasping action as well as a non-human action. In none of the experiments did infants flexibly anticipate the action based on the goal, but rather on the movement path, irrespective of the type of agent. Although one experiment contained a direct replication of Cannon and Woodward (2012), we were not able to replicate their findings. Overall our work challenges the view that infants are able to flexibly anticipate action goals from early on, but rather rely on movement patterns when processing other's actions.