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Infants Parse Dynamic Action
Author(s) -
Baldwin Dare A.,
Baird Jodie A.,
Saylor Megan M.,
Clark M. Angela
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00310
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , psychology , action (physics) , parsing , motion (physics) , cognitive psychology , test (biology) , developmental psychology , biological motion , artificial intelligence , computer science , perception , neuroscience , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
As observers of human behavior, infants are faced with a complex flow of motion in which pauses are rare and only occasionally coincide with boundaries between intentional actions. Two studies investigated whether, despite such complexity, 10‐ to 11‐month‐old infants ( N = 16 for each study) possess skills for parsing ongoing behavior along boundaries correlated with the initiation and completion of intentions. After being familiarized with digitized sequences of continuous everyday action, infants showed renewed interest in test versions in which motion paused in the midst of an actor's pursuit of intentions (interrupting test videos). In contrast, pauses that suspended motion at intention boundary points (completing test videos) sparked no such renewed interest on infants' part. Moreover, basic salience differences between the two types of test videos were not the source of infants' increased interest when intentions were interrupted (Study 2). These findings demonstrate that infants readily detect disruptions of the structure inherent in intentional action, and hence parse ongoing behavior with respect to such structure. Such parsing skill is likely a prerequisite to the development of genuine intentional understanding.