Infant's perception of goal-directed actions performed by a mechanical device

The present work investigated whether by the end of the first year, infants interpret actions performed by a mechanical device as goal-directed and why they would do so. Using a modified version of the Woodward (1998) habituation paradigm, 9- and 12-month-old infants were tested in a condition in which they saw a mechanical claw performing an action (Study 1). When infants viewed the claw grasping and transporting objects to the back of a stage, 12-month-old but not 9-month-old infants interpreted the action as goal-directed. In Study 2, 9-month-olds received prior to habituation an information phase showing infants how a human held and operated the claw. This enrichment of infants’ knowledge enabled 9-month-old infants to interpret the action display as goal-directed. The role of the developing means-end understanding and tool-use for infants’ interpretation of actions performed by a mechanical device is discussed.     

Do as I say - or as I do?! How 18- and 24-month-olds integrate words and actions to infer intentions in situations of match or mismatch

Infants use behavioral and verbal cues to infer another person’s action intention. However, it is still unclear how infants integrate these often co-occurring cues depending on the cues’ coherence (i.e., the degree to which the cues provide coherent information about another’s intention). This study investigated how 18- and 24-month-olds’ (N = 88 per age group) action selection was influenced by varying the coherence of a model’s verbal and behavioral cues. Using a between-subjects design, infants received six trials with different stimulus objects. In the conditions Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, the model uttered a telic verb particle that was followed by a matching or contradicting goal-directed action demonstration, or by a non goal-directed slipping motion, respectively. In the condition Pseudo-word, a nonsense word was combined with a goal-directed action demonstration. Infants’ action selection indicated an adherence to the verbal cue in Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, and this was stronger in 24- than 18-month-olds. Additionally, in Incongruent and Failed-attempt, patterns of cue integration across the six trials varied in the two age groups. Regarding the behavioral cue, infants in Congruent and Pseudo-word preferentially followed this cue in both age groups, which also suggested a rather unspecific effect of the verbal cue in Congruent. Relatively longer first action-latencies in Incongruent and Failed-attempt implied that these types of coherence elicited higher cognitive demands than in Congruent and Pseudo-word. Results are discussed in light of infants’ flexibility in using social cues, depending on the cue’s coherence and on age-related social-cognitive differences.     

Categorization and sensorimotor interaction with objects

Three experiments were aimed at verifying whether the modality of interaction with objects and the goals defined by the task influences the weight of the properties used for categorization. In Experiment 1 we used everyday objects (cups and glasses). In order to exclude that the results depended on pre-stored categorical knowledge and to assess the role of a purely perceptual property such as colour, novel objects were used respectively in Experiment 2 and Experiment 3. Participants experienced objects in different modalities of interaction: Vision, Vision+Action, Action, and Mirror (they observed an experimenter touching and lifting them), then they were submitted to a similarity evaluation task and to a more action-based sorting task. Objects varied in intrinsic properties which had a different degree of interactivity: Grip, Shape, Size and Colour. Overall Grip, the most interactive property, was relevant for categorization, together with Size in Experiment 1 and with Shape in Experiment 2 and Experiment 3. The relevance of Grip in the sorting task confirms that goal-relevant properties are more weighted. The absence of a modality effect is discussed in the framework of the theories arguing that the vision of objects and of conspecifics interacting with objects automatically activates motor information.     

Young infants' actions reveal their developing knowledge of support variables: converging evidence for violation-of-expectation findings

Violation-of-expectation (VOE) tasks have revealed substantial developments in young infants' knowledge about support events: by 5.5 months, infants expect an object to fall when released against but not on a surface; and by 6.5 months, infants expect an object to fall when released with 15% but not 100% of its bottom on a surface. Here we investigated whether action tasks would reveal the same developmental pattern. Consistent with VOE reports, 5.5- and 6.5-month-old infants were more likely to reach for a toy that rested on as opposed to against a surface; and 6.5- but not 5.5-month-olds were more likely to reach for a toy with 100% as opposed to 15% of its bottom on a surface. Infants at each age thus used their support knowledge to determine whether the toys were likely to be retrievable or to be attached to adjacent surfaces and hence irretrievable. These and control findings extend recent evidence that developmental patterns observed in VOE tasks also hold in action tasks, and as such provide further support for the view that VOE and action tasks tap the same physical knowledge.     

No deficits in nonverbal memory, metamemory and internal as well as external source memory in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

A large body of literature suggests that some symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) result from mnemonic dysfunctions. The present study tested various formulations of the memory deficit hypothesis considering important moderators, such as depression and response slowing. Thirty-two OCD patients and 32 healthy controls were presented verbal or nonverbal instructions for actions (e.g. simple gestures). These actions should either be performed or imagined. For recognition, previously presented as well as novel actions were displayed. Decisions had to be made whether an action was previously displayed (verbally vs. nonverbally) or not and whether an action was performed or imagined (internal source memory). Moreover, both judgments required confidence ratings. Groups did not differ in memory accuracy and metamemory for verbally presented material. Patients displayed some impairment for nonverbally presented material and imagined instructions, which, however, could be fully accounted for by response slowing and depressive symptoms. The study challenges the view that primary memory deficits underlie OCD or any of its subtypes. We claim that research should move forward from the mere study of objective impairment to the assessment of cognitive performance in conjunction with personality traits such as inflated responsibility.     

Both motor prediction and conceptual congruency between preview and action-effect contribute to explicit judgment of agency

The sense of agency is the sense that one is causing an action. The inferential account of the sense of agency proposes that we experience the sense of agency when we infer that one’s own thoughts are the cause of an action. According to this account, the inference occurs when a thought appears in consciousness prior to an action, is consistent with the action, and is not accompanied by conspicuous other causes of the action. Alternatively, a predictive account of the sense of agency proposes that sensory prediction based on efferent (motor) information plays a critical role in generating the sense of agency. The present study investigated whether the sense of agency depended primarily on the conceptual congruence between preview information (i.e., to elicit a thought) and actual sensory feedback as suggested by the inferential account, or whether it depended primarily on the sensory-motor congruence between prediction and actual sensory feedback as suggested by the predictive account. The results indicated that both of these factors did contribute to the sense of agency, although sensory-motor congruence appears to have a more robust impact.     

Seeing power in action: The roles of deliberation, implementation, and action in inferences of power

Six experiments investigate the hypothesis that social targets who display a greater action orientation are perceived as having more power (i.e., more control, less dependence, and more influence) than less action-oriented targets. I find evidence that this inference pattern is based on the pervasive belief that individuals with more power experience less constraint and have a greater capacity to act according to their own volition. Observers infer that targets have more power and influence when they exhibit more implementation than deliberation in the process of making decisions in their personal lives (Study 1a), in a public policy context (Study 1b), and in small groups (Study 2). In an organizational context, observers infer that a target who votes for a policy to change from the status quo has more power than a target who votes not to change from the status quo (Study 3). People also infer greater intra-organizational power and higher hierarchical rank in targets who take physical action toward a personal goal than in those who do not (Studies 4-5).     

Youth Action Research for Prevention: A Multi-level Intervention Designed to Increase Efficacy and Empowerment Among Urban Youth

Youth Action Research for Prevention (YARP), a federally funded research and demonstration intervention, utilizes youth empowerment as the cornerstone of a multi-level intervention designed to reduce and/or delay onset of drug and sex risk, while increasing individual and collective efficacy and educational expectations. The intervention, located in Hartford Connecticut, served 114 African-Caribbean and Latino high school youth in a community education setting and a matched comparison group of 202 youth from 2001 to 2004. The strategy used in YARP begins with individuals, forges group identity and cohesion, trains youth as a group to use research to understand their community better (formative community ethnography), and then engages them in using the research for social action at multiple levels in community settings (policy, school-based, parental etc.) Engagement in community activism has, in turn, an effect on individual and collective efficacy and individual behavioral change. This approach is unique insofar as it differs from multilevel interventions that create approaches to attack multiple levels simultaneously. We describe the YARP intervention and employ qualitative and quantitative data from the quasi-experimental evaluation study design to assess the way in which the YARP approach empowered individual youth and groups of youth (youth networks) to engage in social action in their schools, communities and at the policy level, which in turn affected their attitudes and behaviors.     

Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin

We investigated whether a bottlenosed dolphin’s ability to recall and repeat actions on command would immediately generalize to actions performed with specified objects. The dolphin was tested on her ability to repeat 18 novel behaviors performed with potentially interchangeable objects specified using an artificial gestural language. Such “action events” were correctly repeated at above chance levels, indicating that the dolphin had access to memories of those events. Performance levels were, however, lower than in previous tests. The dolphin appeared to have difficulty recalling which object an action was performed with. Previous research has demonstrated that animals can recall features of their environment and features of their actions independently of one another. The results of this study demonstrate (1) that the dolphin’s concept of repeating extends beyond simply accessing memories of movement patterns, and (2) that dolphins’ memories of past events incorporate representations of both self-performed acts and objects, locations, or gestural instructions. Received:10 October 1998 / Accepted after revision: 22 December 1998     

The role of action effects in 12-month-olds' action control: a comparison of televised model and live model

The present study investigated differences in infant imitation after watching a televised model and a live model and addressed the issue of whether action effects influence infants’ action control in both cases. In a 2 × 2 design, 12-month-old infants observed a live or a televised model performing a three-step action sequence, in which either the 2nd or the 3rd action step was combined with an acoustical action effect. We assumed that infants would use the observed action-effect relations for their own action control in the test phase afterwards. Even though results exhibited differences in the absolute amount of imitation between the two demonstration groups, both groups showed similar result patterns regarding the action effect manipulation: infants imitated the action step that was followed by a salient action effect more often and mostly as the first target action, emphasizing the important role of action effects in infants’ action control.