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Infants’ attribution of a goal to a morphologically unfamiliar agent
Abstract
How do infants identify the psychological actors in their environments? Three groups of 12‐month‐old infants were tested for their willingness to encode a simple approach behavior as goal‐directed as a function of whether it was performed by (1) a human hand, (2) a morphologically unfamiliar green object that interacted with a confederate and behaved intentionally, or (3) the same unfamiliar green object that behaved in a matched, but apparently random manner. Using a visual habituation technique, only infants in the first two conditions were found to encode the approach behavior as goal‐directed. Thus infants appear able to attribute goals to non‐human, even unfamiliar agents. These results imply that by the end of the first year of life infants have a broad notion of what counts as an agent that cannot easily be reduced to humans, objects that are perceptually similar to humans, or objects that display self‐propulsion.
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Cites
Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
(1995) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.33-2412 · Cited by 3,670
ToMM, ToBY, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity
Leslie, A. M. (1994) · Mapping the Mind · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511752902.006 · Cited by 1,105
Cited by
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.864 · Cited by 4,069
Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others
Hamlin, J. K., & Wynn, K. (2011) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.09.001 · Cited by 608
Can a Self-Propelled Box Have a Goal?: Psychological Reasoning in 5-Month-Old Infants
Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2005) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01582.x · Cited by 406
Goal attribution to inanimate agents by 6.5-month-old infants
Csibra, G. (2008) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.08.001 · Cited by 354
Giving leads to happiness in young children
Aknin, L. B., Hamlin, J. K., & Dunn, E. W. (2012) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039211 · Cited by 304
Metadata
- Authors
- Shimizu, Y. A., & Johnson, S. C.
- Venue
- Developmental Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2004-08-16
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 425-430
- ISSN
- 1363-755X (ISSN-L)
- 1467-7687
- OpenAlex
- W2133738826
- Cited by
- 168
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 29.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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