Pulling out the intentional structure of action: the relation between action processing and action production in infancy.

TLDR: It is demonstrated that 12-month-old infants understand that the initial step of the cloth-pulling sequence is directed toward the ultimate goal of attaining the toy, and use their knowledge of the causal constraints of the sequence to make this goal attribution.

About: This article is published in Cognition.The article was published on 2005-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 322 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Action (philosophy).

Figures

Fig. 3. A planful solution.

Fig. 1. (a) Toy-on-cloth condition. (b) Toy-off-cloth condition.

Fig. 4. Scatterplot of relation between habituation and action task performance, Study 2.

Fig. 2. Mean looking times to the last three habituation trials and test events, Studies 1 and 2.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "Pulling out the intentional structure of action: the relation between action processing and action production in infancy" ?

In this paper, the authors explore the ontogeny of hierarchically organized action representations, and its relation to infants ’ ability to produce similar sequences. To do so, the authors examine infants ’ perception and performance of a means-end sequence: pulling a cloth to retrieve a toy. Using a visual habituation paradigm, the authors demonstrate that 12-month-old infants understand that the initial step of the cloth-pulling sequence is directed toward the ultimate goal of attaining the toy, and use their knowledge of the causal constraints of the sequence to make this goal attribution. These findings are consistent with a burgeoning body of literature suggesting an intimate link between action production and perception, and suggest that this link is in place by at least 10 months of age. 

Q2. What is the importance of a hierarchical structure to a concept of intentions?

Hierarchical action representations are also fundamental to a concept of intentions as independent of the particular actions that express them. 

Q3. Why did the authors retain infants’ data in the final analyses?

Because the exclusion of the data from those infants who failed to habituate did not change the pattern of findings, the authors chose to retain their data in the final analyses. 

Q4. What are the main aspects of infants’ ability to create structured action representations?

Infants’ ability to parse actions (e.g. Baird & Baldwin, 2001), integrate information across objects and events (e.g. Cohen, 1998; Cohen, Chaput, & Cashon, 2002), and to inhibit and temporally sequence actions and representations (Diamond, 1991) are domaingeneral intellectual capacities that are developing over the first year of life which may be integral to infants’ ability to create structured action representations centered around an overarching goal. 

Q5. How do infants come to understand the actions of others?

Their findings further suggest that 10–12 months of age is transitional period with respect to action understanding and point to a mechanism by which infants may come to understand the actions of others: by observing and executing particular actions in their own behavior. 

Q6. What did Needham, Barrett, and Peterman (2002) demonstrate?

For instance, Needham, Barrett, and Peterman (2002) demonstrated that providing pre-reaching infants with experience apprehending objects increased their visual exploration of objects. 

Q7. What is the proper domain for tapping infants’ action representations?

At a general level, the authors believe that studying infants’ interpretation of human goaldirected action (as opposed to motion trajectories of inanimate objects) is the proper domain for tapping infants’ action representations. 

Q8. How did they find that infants perform actions that had been demonstrated to produce interesting effects?

Using an imitation paradigm, Hauf et al. (in press) found that infants perform actions that had been demonstrated to produce interesting effects more frequently and more quickly than other actions. 

Q9. What is the role of the infant in the development of the ability to solve means-end sequence?

Work on infants’ ability to solve simple means-end sequences (such as reaching around a barrier to retrieve a toy, reaching into a box to obtain an object, and pulling a cloth to grasp an out-of-reach toy) suggests that this form of problem solving follows a protracted development, but that 9–12 months of age marks a particularly important developmental period in infants’ ability to spontaneously solve one-step means-end sequences in a planful manner (e.g. Bates, Carlson-Luden, & Bretherton, 1980; Diamond, 1985; Piaget, 1953; Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975; Willatts, 1990).