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Minimal cues of possession transfer compel infants to ascribe the goal of giving
Editors
Title / Series / Name
Open Mind
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/12694
Abstract
Human infants’ readiness to interpret impoverished object-transfer events as acts of giving suggests the existence of a dedicated action schema for identifying interactions based on active object transfer. Here we investigated the sensitivity of this giving schema by testing whether 15-month-olds would interpret the displacement of an object as an agent’s goal even if it could be dismissed as side effect of a different goal. Across two looking-time experiments, we showed that, when the displacement only resulted in a change of object location, infants expected the agent to pursue the other goal. However, when the same change of location resulted in a transfer of object possession, infants reliably adopted this outcome as the agent’s goal. The interpretive shift that the mere presence of a potential recipient induced is testament to the infants’ susceptibility to cues of benefit delivery: an action efficiently causing a transfer of object possession appeared sufficient to induce the interpretation of goal-directed giving even if the transfer was carried out without any interaction between Giver and Givee and was embedded in an event affording an alternative goal interpretation.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Type
Journal article
Date
2019
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00024