title: "Let's work together": what do infants understand about collaborative goals?
abstract: Collaboration is fundamental to our daily lives, yet little is known about how humans come to understand these activities. The present research was conducted to fill this void by using a novel visual habituation paradigm to investigate infants' understanding of the collaborative-goal structure of collaborative action. The findings of the three experiments reported here suggest that 14-month-old infants understand that the actions of collaborative partners are complementary and critical to the attainment of a common collaborative goal. Importantly, 14-month-olds do not interpret the actions of two individuals in terms of a collaborative goal when their actions are not causally related. The implications of our findings for theories of collaboration and folk psychology are discussed.
authors: Department of Psychology, HSB building, 10 Symonds Street, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. a.henderson@auckland.ac.nz
authors: Annette M E
authors: AM
authors: Henderson
authors: Amanda L
authors: AL
authors: Woodward
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology