Evidence for a unitary goal concept in 12-month-old infants.
We investigated whether infants can transfer their goal attribution between situations that contain different types of information about the goal. We found that 12-month-olds who had attributed a goal based on the causal efficacy of a means-end action generated expectations about the actor's action in another scenario in which the actor could choose between alternative outcomes. This finding suggests that, by 12 months, infants possess a unitary concept of goal.
Department of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands. sbiro@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Szilvia
S
Biro
Stephan
S
Verschoor
Lot
L
Coenen
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002657:Child Development; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D002666:Psychology, Child