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Infants’ ability to understand others’ action goals by using morphological information

  • THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
  • 2015, 28(2), pp.175-194
  • Publisher : The Korean Society For Developmental Psychology
  • Research Area : Social Science > Psychological Science

Eun Young Kim 1 Hyun Joo SONG 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated whether infants could infer others’ goals by using morphological information. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds were familiarized with scenes in which an actor slid one of two objects forward and backward, uttering a novel word as either a verb (verb condition) or a noun (noun condition). During the pre-test display, the positions of the two objects were switched; the prior goal object was placed within a short frame and the other object was placed within a long frame. In the test trial, the actor grasped the non-slidable prior goal object (short frame/prior goal event) or the slidable non-prior goal object (long frame/non-prior goal event). Infants in the verb condition looked longer at the short frame/prior goal event than at the long frame/non-prior goal event. Infants in the noun condition looked about equally at the two events. In Experiment 2, in which no novel word was uttered during familiarization trials, we found the same pattern as in the noun condition of Experiment 1. Thus, verbs, but not nouns, led infants to interpret the actor’s goal as an action style. Experiment 3, in which 15-month-olds participated in the task used in Experiment 1, demonstrated that infants’ ability to use morphological information when understanding others’ goals develops between 15 and 19 months.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.