The early origins of goal attribution in infancy.
We contrast two positions concerning the initial domain of actions that infants interpret as goal-directed. The 'narrow scope' view holds that goal-attribution in 6- and 9-month-olds is restricted to highly familiar actions (such as grasping). The cue-based approach of the infant's 'teleological stance', however, predicts that if the cues of equifinal variation of action and a salient action effect are present, young infants can attribute goals to a 'wide scope' of entities including unfamiliar human actions and actions of novel objects lacking human features. It is argued that previous failures to show goal-attribution to unfamiliar actions were due to the absence of these cues. We report a modified replication of Woodward (1999) showing that when a salient action-effect is presented, even young infants can attribute a goal to an unfamiliar manual action. This study together with other recent experiments reviewed support the 'wide scope' approach indicating that if the cues of goal-directedness are present even 6-month-olds attribute goals to unfamiliar actions.
Király
Ildikó
I
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. kiralyi@mtapi.hu
Jovanovic
Bianca
B
Prinz
Wolfgang
W
Aschersleben
Gisa
G
Gergely
György
G
D001364:Awareness; D003210:Concept Formation; D003243:Consciousness; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D033182:Intention; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007699:Kinesthesis; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011340:Problem Solving; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D014796:Visual Perception