Infants' ability to distinguish between purposeful and nonpurposeful behaviors

Prior studies (Gergely et al., 1995; Woodward, 1998) have found that infants focus on the goals of an action over other details. The current studies tested whether infants would distinguish between a behavior that seemed to be goal-directed and one that seemed not to be. Infants in one condition saw an actor grasp one of two toys that sat side by side on a stage, infants in the other condition saw the actor drop her hand onto one-of the toys in a manner that looked unintentional. Once infants had been habituated to these events, they were shown test events in which either the path of motion or the object that was touched had changed. Nine-month-olds differentiated between these two actions. When they saw the actor grasp the toy, they looked longer on trials with a change in goal object than on trials with a change in path. When they saw the actor drop her hand onto the toy, they looked equally at the two test events. These findings did not result from infants being more interested in grasping as compared to inert hands. In a second study, 5-month-old infants showed patterns similar to those seen in 9-month-olds. These findings have implications for theories of the development of the concept of intention. They argue against the claim that infants are innately predisposed to interpret any motion of an animate agent as intentional.