TY - JOUR
T1 - Do 12.5-month-old infants consider what objects others can see when interpreting their actions?
AU - Luo, Yuyan
AU - Baillargeon, Renée
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by research funds from the University of Missouri at Columbia to the first author and by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-21104) to the second author. We thank Gergo Csibra, Jerry DeJong, Cindy Fisher, George Gergely, Alan Leslie, and the members of the Infant Cognition Reading Group (Matthias Bolz, Zijing He, Dong-Bo Hsu, Jackie Jaszka, Jie Li, and Di Wu), for helpful discussions and suggestions; the staff of the University of Illinois Infant Cognition Laboratory for their help with the data collection, and the parents and infants who participated in the research.
PY - 2007/12
Y1 - 2007/12
N2 - The present research examined whether 12.5-month-old infants take into account what objects an agent knows to be present in a scene when interpreting the agent's actions. In two experiments, the infants watched a female human agent repeatedly reach for and grasp object-A as opposed to object-B on an apparatus floor. Object-B was either (1) visible to the agent through a transparent screen; (2) hidden from the agent (but not the infants) by an opaque screen; or (3) placed by the agent herself behind the opaque screen, so that even though she could no longer see object-B, she knew of its presence there. The infants interpreted the agent's repeated actions toward object-A as revealing a preference for object-A over object-B only when she could see object-B (1) or was aware of its presence in the scene (3). These results indicate that, when watching an agent act on objects in a scene, 12.5-month-old infants keep track of the agent's representation of the physical setting in which these actions occur. If the agent's representation is incomplete, because the agent is ignorant about some aspect of the setting, infants use the agent's representation, rather than their own more complete representation, to interpret the agent's actions.
AB - The present research examined whether 12.5-month-old infants take into account what objects an agent knows to be present in a scene when interpreting the agent's actions. In two experiments, the infants watched a female human agent repeatedly reach for and grasp object-A as opposed to object-B on an apparatus floor. Object-B was either (1) visible to the agent through a transparent screen; (2) hidden from the agent (but not the infants) by an opaque screen; or (3) placed by the agent herself behind the opaque screen, so that even though she could no longer see object-B, she knew of its presence there. The infants interpreted the agent's repeated actions toward object-A as revealing a preference for object-A over object-B only when she could see object-B (1) or was aware of its presence in the scene (3). These results indicate that, when watching an agent act on objects in a scene, 12.5-month-old infants keep track of the agent's representation of the physical setting in which these actions occur. If the agent's representation is incomplete, because the agent is ignorant about some aspect of the setting, infants use the agent's representation, rather than their own more complete representation, to interpret the agent's actions.
KW - Goals/dispositions
KW - Infant cognition
KW - Perception
KW - Psychological reasoning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=34848863633&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.10.007
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.10.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 17182023
AN - SCOPUS:34848863633
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 105
SP - 489
EP - 512
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 3
ER -