TY - JOUR
T1 - Five-month-old infants attribute inferences based on general knowledge to agents
AU - Ting, Fransisca
AU - He, Zijing
AU - Baillargeon, Renée
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to R.B. (60847) and by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Z.H. (31200763). We thank the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Infant Cognition Lab for its help with the data collection; graphic artist Steve Holland for producing the figures; and the families who participated in the research.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to R.B. ( 60847 ) and by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Z.H. ( 31200763 ). We thank the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Infant Cognition Lab for its help with the data collection; graphic artist Steve Holland for producing the figures; and the families who participated in the research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - To make sense of others’ actions, we generally consider what information is available to them. This information may come from different sources, including perception and inference. Like adults, young infants track what information agents can obtain through perception: If an agent directly observes an event, for example, young infants expect the agent to have information about it. However, no investigation has yet examined whether young infants also track what information agents can obtain through inference, by bringing to bear relevant general knowledge. Building on the finding that by 4 months of age most infants have acquired the physical rule that wide objects can fit into wide containers but not narrow containers, we asked whether 5-month-olds would expect an agent who was searching for a wide toy hidden in her absence to reach for a wide box as opposed to a narrow box. Infants looked significantly longer when the agent selected the narrow box, suggesting that they expected her (a) to share the physical knowledge that wide objects can fit only into wide containers and (b) to infer that the wide toy must be hidden in the wide box. Three additional conditions supported this interpretation. Together, these results cast doubt on two-system accounts of early psychological reasoning, which claim that infants’ early-developing system is too inflexible and encapsulated to integrate inputs from other cognitive processes, such as physical reasoning. Instead, the results support one-system accounts and provide new evidence that young infants’ burgeoning psychological-reasoning system is qualitatively similar to that of older children and adults.
AB - To make sense of others’ actions, we generally consider what information is available to them. This information may come from different sources, including perception and inference. Like adults, young infants track what information agents can obtain through perception: If an agent directly observes an event, for example, young infants expect the agent to have information about it. However, no investigation has yet examined whether young infants also track what information agents can obtain through inference, by bringing to bear relevant general knowledge. Building on the finding that by 4 months of age most infants have acquired the physical rule that wide objects can fit into wide containers but not narrow containers, we asked whether 5-month-olds would expect an agent who was searching for a wide toy hidden in her absence to reach for a wide box as opposed to a narrow box. Infants looked significantly longer when the agent selected the narrow box, suggesting that they expected her (a) to share the physical knowledge that wide objects can fit only into wide containers and (b) to infer that the wide toy must be hidden in the wide box. Three additional conditions supported this interpretation. Together, these results cast doubt on two-system accounts of early psychological reasoning, which claim that infants’ early-developing system is too inflexible and encapsulated to integrate inputs from other cognitive processes, such as physical reasoning. Instead, the results support one-system accounts and provide new evidence that young infants’ burgeoning psychological-reasoning system is qualitatively similar to that of older children and adults.
KW - Infancy
KW - Inference
KW - Knowledge
KW - Preference
KW - Theory of mind
KW - Two-system accounts
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105126
DO - 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105126
M3 - Article
C2 - 33862527
AN - SCOPUS:85104062281
SN - 0022-0965
VL - 208
JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
M1 - 105126
ER -