Kanakogi and Itakura, 2011 figure 1C (part)
Earlier I mentioned this experiment, which shows that infants
fail to track goals involving things which would appear to them to be
biomechanically non-agent-like events.
But ...
\#source 'research/teleological stance -- csibra and gergely.doc'
\#source 'lectures/mindreading and joint action - philosophical tools (ceu budapest 2012-autumn fall)/lecture05 actions intentions goals'
\#source 'lectures/mindreading and joint action - philosophical tools (ceu budapest 2012-autumn fall)/lecture06 goal ascription teleological motor'
When do human infants first track goal-directed actions and not just movements?
Here's a classic experiment from way back in 1995.
The subjects were 12 month old infants.
They were habituated to this sequence of events.
Gergely et al 1995, figure 1
For the test condition, infants were divided into two groups. One saw a new action, ...
... the other saw an old action.
Now if infants were considering the movements only and ignoring information about the goal, the 'new action' (movement in a straight line) should be more interesting because it is most different.
But if infants are taking goal-related information into action, the 'old action' might be unexpected and so might generate greater dishabituation.
Gergely et al 1995, figure 3
Gergely et al 1995, figure 5
‘by the end of the first year infants are indeed capable of taking the intentional stance (Dennett, 1987) in interpreting the goal- directed behavior of rational agents.’
\citep[p.\ 184]{Gergely:1995sq}
‘12-month-old babies could identify the agent’s goal and analyze its actions causally in relation to it’
\citep[p.\ 190]{Gergely:1995sq}
You might say, it's bizarre to have used balls in this study, that can't show us anything about infants' understanding of action.
But adult humans naturally interpret the movements of even very simple shapes in terms of goals.
So using even very simple stimuli doesn't undermine the interpretation of these results.
Heider and Simmel, figure 1
Consider a further experiment by \citet{Csibra:2003jv}, also with
12-month-olds. This is just like the first ball-jumping experiment
except that here infants see the action but not the circumstances in
which it occurs. Do they expect there to be an object in the way behind
that barrier?
Csibra et al 2003, figure 6
Daum et al, 2012 figure 1
Daum et al created a modified version of Woodward’s paradigm which allowed them to measure
both anticipatory looking and dishabituation.
where researchers have measured two different responses to a single
scenario, anticipatory looking and either dishabituation or pupil dilation.
Generally, they appear to find evidence for goal tracking in dishabituation
or pupil dilation but not in anticipatory looking.
(This is true of Daum et al, 2012; and Gredeback and Melinder, 2010.)
Why the discrepancy?
This is another question we can’t answer with the Motor Theory of Goal
Tracking.
Daum et al, 2012 figure 2
[skip -- just here in case need for discussion; shows that anticipatory looking
to cartoon fish takes years to develop]