title: Infants Understand Others' Needs.
abstract: Infants begin to help other individuals in the second year of life. However, it is still unclear whether early helping behavior is based on an understanding of other individuals' needs and is thus motivated prosocially. In the present eye-tracking study, 9- to 18-month-old infants (N= 71) saw a character in need of help, unable to reach its goal because of an obstacle, and a second character that was able to achieve a goal on its own. When a third individual (a helper) initiated an action, the infants expected the helper to help the character in need (as indicated during the anticipatory-looking and violation-of-expectation phases). Their prosocial understanding did not differ between age groups and was not related to their helping behavior (measured in two behavioral tasks). Thus, infants understand other individuals' needs even before they start to help others themselves. This indicates that early helping may indeed be motivated prosocially and raises the question of which other competences underlie the ontogeny of helping behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Münster Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück moritz.koester@uni-muenster.de.
authors.forename: Moritz
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Köster
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück.
authors.forename: Xenia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ohmer
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück.
authors.forename: Thanh Dung
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Münster.
authors.forename: Joscha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kärtner
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation
keywords: eye tracking; infant cognition; prosocial behavior