The early origins of goal attribution in infancy

• Published in: Consciousness and cognition Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. 752 - 769
• Main Authors: Király, Ildikó, Jovanovic, Bianca, Prinz, Wolfgang, Aschersleben, Gisa, Gergely, György
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.12.2003
• Subjects: Awareness; Concept Formation; Consciousness; Ego; Female; Goals; Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Humans; Infant; Intention; Internal-External Control; Kinesthesis; Male; Orientation; Personal Construct Theory; Problem Solving; Psychology, Child; Psychomotor Performance; Visual Perception
• ISSN: 1053-8100; 1090-2376
• DOI: 10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00084-9

We contrast two positions concerning the initial domain of actions that infants interpret as goal-directed. The ‘narrow scope’ view holds that goal-attribution in 6- and 9-month-olds is restricted to highly familiar actions (such as grasping) (Woodward, Sommerville, & Guajardo, 2001). The cue-based approach of the infant’s ‘teleological stance’ (Gergely & Csibra, 2003), however, predicts that if the cues of equifinal variation of action and a salient action effect are present, young infants can attribute goals to a ‘wide scope’ of entities including unfamiliar human actions and actions of novel objects lacking human features. It is argued that previous failures to show goal-attribution to unfamiliar actions were due to the absence of these cues. We report a modified replication of Woodward (1999) showing that when a salient action-effect is presented, even young infants can attribute a goal to an unfamiliar manual action. This study together with other recent experiments reviewed support the ‘wide scope’ approach indicating that if the cues of goal-directedness are present even 6-month-olds attribute goals to unfamiliar actions.