The Study on Investigation of Children' Ability to Set Goals

The ability to interpret other people’s actions in a goal-directed way is important to our understanding of the world and serves as a vital guide in human action. Previous researches have shown that the tendency to detect goals in events emerges relative early in infancy. The current study thus aims to investigate further into the topic and examine what contributes to the construction of infants’ ability to identify goal structure in action. In particular, the researchers focus on how infants’ first-hand action experience may impact their interpretations of events in a goal-directed manner and vice versa. To address this question, the researchers evaluate infants’ responses to a person’s grasping action of objects with or without prior contact to the similar objects by measuring looking times and object-directed contacts. Based on previous researches, the authors hypothesize that action experience predicts an significant impact on infants’ interpretation of goal-directed actions. Specifically, previous studies have depicted how infants show more surprises when a person changes his goal in reaching for a different toy than a change in reaching for the similar toy in a different location, suggesting that young infants are able to identify human actions without relying on perceptual properties and encode these actions with a goal-directed understanding. These findings lead to the authors to hypothesize that prior experiences of an action may contribute to infants’ ability to attribute a goal to that specific action. Alternative hypotheses would indicate that action experiences do no enhance infants’ tendency to represent goal-directed actions.

In the action task portion of the study, the dependent variable is the proportion of time of infants’ object-directed actions (coordinated gaze and manual contact) and looks to the objects. In the habituation procedure, the dependent variable is infants’ looking duration to each outcome of the action event. The overall independent variable between groups is whether infants were assigned to reach-first condition (performing action task prior to viewing the habituation event) or watch-first condition (performing action task after the habituation procedure). Within groups, the independent variable in habituation procedure is whether infants saw the new goal event (the actor reached for a different toy than she grasped in habituation) or the new path event (the actor reached for a different location for the same toy she grasped in habituation). The independent variable within group in action task is whether infants make contacts with the objects with mittens on or without mittens on. As a result, if action experience make an impact on infants’ ability to interpret event in goal-directed way, then infants assigned to reach-first condition would look longer at the new goal event than the new path event because they are surprised by the change in the person’s goal. In addition, if wearing mitten enhances infants’ interaction with objects and thus support the idea that their understanding to goal structure derived from self-produced action rather than perceptual experience, then infants engage in prior action experience with mittens on would exhibit more direct contact with the objects and would be able to identify the action of another person wearing the same mitten as a goal-directed action.

Method Participant

Participants in this study include thirty 3-month-old infants, who were randomly assigned to two test conditions. Ten males and five females were assigned to reach-first condition. Nine males and six females were assigned to watch-first condition. Procedure Infants were first randomly assigned to one of the two conditions, reach-first condition or watch-first condition. In reach-first condition, infants performed action task before the habituation procedure and infants in watch-first condition performed in reverse order. During action task, a teddy bear and a ball were placed on the table and infants were first allowed to interact with the objects without any interference for 180 seconds. After the first 180 seconds, infants entered the mittens interaction phase. Infants wore mittens that are made of special fabric and allowed for easier contact with the toys. This time, infants were given 200 seconds to interact with the objects with mittens on. An experimenter who is blind to the condition of the experiment coded infants’ directed actions with the object andlooks to the objects with or without mittens on.

During the visual habituation procedure, infants watched events shown on the puppet stage. In habituation phase, infants saw a person wearing the same mitten that was worn by infants in action task reached for one of the toys (a teddy bear or a ball) presented side by side. In test phase, infants saw two different outcomes of the events. In new goal event, the person reached for a different toy then she did during habituation. In new path event, the person reached for a different location but for the same toy in habituation). Infants watched a total of six trials of each event outcome alternatively, and each trial lasted 120 seconds. An experimenter who is blind to the condition of the experiment recorded infants’ looking duration to the outcome of each event.

Results Habituation Procedure

In test trials, there is a significant main effect that infants looked longer at new goal event than the new path event with a P-level less than 3%. A significant interaction with P-level less than 4% is observed within the reach-first condition. Infants in reach-first condition looked significantly longer at the new goal event with a P-level less than 2%. However, infants in the watch-first condition looked equally at both events with no significant interaction. The results suggest that contacting with the objects prior to viewing an action event enhance infants’ ability to attribute goal to that action (Sommerville, Woodward, & Needham, 2005).

In both reach-first and watch-first conditions, infants spent more time gazing and contacting with the objects when mittens were put on with a P-level less than 1%. In reach-first condition, there is a significant correlation between infants’ object-directed actions (coordinated gaze and manual contact), with the objects wearing the mittens and their responses in the new goal and new path test events with a P-level less than 4%. However, their responses were found not correlated with their looks with the toys (P-level greater than 0.6) or their object-directed actions with the toys without mittens (P-level greater than 0.7). These results indicates that infants previously engaged in object-directed actions with mittens showed a selective response on goal-directed events (Sommerville, Woodward, & Needham, 2005).

General Discussion

The results in the present study support the authors’ hypothesis that infants with prior direct contact experience with objects show goal-directed representations when viewing actions of other people with the similar objects. Such finding provide evidence that action experience contribute to infants’ learning of goal-directedness, such that action production has strong impact on the understanding of perceived actions. One limitation of the study is that the researchers did not evaluate observational experience. In the study, infants were only engaged in self-produce interaction with the objects. However, infants’ emergence of understanding an action in a goal-directed manner may derive only from the fact that they were exposed to the action earlier. Such expose may not need to be a direct active experience that infants perform themselves, an action performed by other people that infants observe may also contribute to the enhancement. This limitation can be overcome if the researchers randomly assigned infants to two groups, one to perform an action themselves and the other to observe the same action performed by another person. Then, infants’ looking time can be recorded to see whether they would look significantly longer at the new goal event if they had produced the action themselves.

The current study focuses primarily on identifying goal-directed events with a clear goal and a successful outcome. Therefore, an interesting next step in investigating infants’ ability in detecting goal-directed action is when do infants understand a goal action with unsuccessful outcome. In everyday life, we perform countless goal-direction actions, but not all of them lead to desirable results we intend for. Even though these actions have unfulfilled outcomes, they are nevertheless actions perceived with goals. As a result, it would be interesting to examine when do infants start to detect a failed goal action.