Infants recognize similar goals across dissimilar actions involving object manipulation.
We investigated infants' ability to recognize the similarity between observed and implied goals when actions differed in surface-level motion details. In two experiments, 10- to 12-month-olds were habituated to an actor manipulating an object and then shown test actions in which the actor contacted the object with a novel hand configuration that implied a goal either similar or dissimilar to the habituation event. Infants in both experiments looked significantly longer at test actions depicting a novel implied goal, suggesting that infants glossed over some surface-level motion details and compared implied goals.
Wabash College, Department of Psychology, Crawfordsville, IN 47933, United States. olofsone@wabash.edu
Eric L
EL
Olofson
Dare
D
Baldwin
D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity; D010465:Perception