Development of means–end behavior in young infants: Pulling a support to retrieve a distant object.

Abstract

Three longitudinal studies are reported in which 6-8-month-old infants were tested on means-end problems involving pulling a cloth to retrieve a toy. Production of intentional means-end behavior increased between 6 and 7 months, but although 6-month-olds' behavior was unaffected by the presence or absence of a toy on the cloth, 7-month-olds more often produced means-end sequences when a toy could be retrieved. Infants' performance remained the same when the cloth was either attached to the toy or separate, suggesting that goal-subgoal conflict does not interfere with performance of means-end sequences. By 8 months, infants could appropriately adjust their means-end behavior to the distance of the toy. These results confirm J. Piaget's (1953) original description of a shift from transitional to intentional means-end behavior and suggest that development of means-end behavior involves acquisition of knowledge of appropriate means-end relations.

Goal directedness and decision making in infants.

“…Infant studies investigating means-ends behaviour, which might be classed as a type of decision making, do not usually rule out the possibility that the studied actions were motivated by stimulus-driven habits learnt through reinforcement. For example, the ability of infants to learn to pull a cloth to retrieve an out of reach object lying on it (Willatts, 1999) could be explained as follows. During initial manipulation of the cloth, the object is brought within reach.…”

“…Infant studies often produce results which are challenging to explain in terms of decision making, but straightforward to explain as a response to a stimulus with stimulus generalisation (Ghirlanda & Enquist, 2003). For example, once 6-to 8-month-olds have learnt to pull a cloth and retrieve a toy resting on it, they will also pull the cloth when the toy is not on it, or pull the cloth without retrieving the toy, sometimes using the same pattern of actions as those classified as "intentional" in the toy-on-cloth context (Willatts, 1999).…”

The developing cognitive substrate of sequential action control in 9- to 12-month-olds: Evidence for concurrent activation models

“…Piaget (1936) and others (Claxton, Keen, & McCarty, 2003;Hauf, 2007;Willatts, 1999;Woodward and Sommerville, 2000;Woodward, Sommerville, Gerson, Henderson & Buresh, 2009) have stated that true goal-directed (sequential ) action emerges around 9 months of age when infants begin to be able to organize means-end action sequences in the service of overarching goals. Although the goals in such sequences are commonly considered "higher-order" in one sense or another, the ontology of the implied (probably hierarchical) representational format of sequential action remains open.…”

Preschoolers’ oculomotor behaviour during their observation of an action task

“…The capacity to link actions that occur together enables one to form coherent representations of action sequences at the level of intention as opposed to the level of the action unit. Adults and children show the propensity to interpret others' actions as well as perform these actions (Lillard & Flavell, 1990;Sommerville & Woodward, 2005;Trabasso, Stein, Rodkin, Munger, & Baugh, 1992;Willatts, 1999). In this study, we examined eye fixations of adults and 4-year-olds during the observation of a goaldirected daily living task in order to gain further insight into movement planning.…”