Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants

dc.contributor.authorTauzin, Tibor
dc.contributor.authorGergely, György
dc.contributor.unitDepartment of Cognitive Science
dc.date.available2022-03-29T09:17:52Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.description.abstractPragmatic theories of communication assume that humans evolved a species-unique inferential capacity to express and recognize intentions via communicative actions. We show that 13-month-old non-verbal infants can interpret the turn-taking exchange of variable tone sequences between unfamiliar agents as indicative of communicative transfer of goal-relevant information from a knowledgeable to a naïve agent pursuing the goal. No such inference of information transfer was drawn by the infants, however, when a) the agents exchanged fully predictable identical signal sequences, which does not enable transmission of new information, or b) when no goal-relevant contextual change was observed that would motivate its communicative transmission. These results demonstrate that young infants can recognize communicative interactions between third-party agents and possess an evolved capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what contextually relevant information has been transmitted between the agents even without language.
dc.description.urihttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-27804-4#article-info
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/12698
dc.identifier.urlhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-27804-4#article-info
dc.language.isoeng
dc.source.epage9
dc.source.journaltitleScientific Reports
dc.source.spage1
dc.source.volume8
dc.titleCommunicative mind-reading in preverbal infants
dc.typeJournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
refterms.dateFOA2022-03-29T09:17:52Z
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