Goal bias in non-linguistic Motion event representations: The role of intentionality

Lakusta, Laura; Wessel, Allison; Landau, Barbara

doi:10.1167/6.6.958

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These results confirm prior evidence about the asymmetrical representation of Source and Goal information (Lakusta & Landau, 2007): In committing motion events to memory, Source objects are encoded in much less detail than Goal objects. Extending earlier results, the present data show that the Source‐Goal object asymmetry holds even when other aspects of the motion event are kept the same (including the event, relation, and type of object involved).…”

Section: Experiments 1a: Encoding Source/goal Objects In Memorysupporting

confidence: 87%

“…There is evidence that the nonlinguistic preference for motion endpoints may only be present for intentional actions. For instance, the Goal bias in memory disappears for events with inanimate agents (e.g., a tissue falling off a magazine onto a book; Lakusta, Wessel, & Landau, 2006; Lakusta & Carey, 2008), or in the presence of intentional cues that make Goals less salient (Lakusta, 2005; Lakusta & Landau, 2007; Landau, 2010). Similarly, infants do not confer privileged status to motion endpoints when motion events have an inanimate/nonintentional agent (Lakusta & Carey, 2008), even though infants encode the Goal of an (animate) agent’s reach, point, and gaze (Woodward, 1998, 2003; Woodward & Guajardo, 2002) and even extend Goal reasoning to self‐propelled, rationally behaving inanimate objects (Csibra, Bíró, Koós, & Gergely, 2003; Luo & Baillargeon, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, prelinguistic infants are more sensitive to Goal than Source changes in processing motion events (Lakusta et al., 2007). Furthermore, both preschool children and adults remember reference objects better if these objects serve as endpoints than origins of motion (Lakusta & Landau, 2007). Relatedly, adults have been shown to discriminate better between spatial configurations at Goals (e.g., putting a lid onto vs. into a pot) compared to configurations at Sources (taking a lid off of vs. out of a pot; Regier & Zheng, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior studies demonstrating the relative richness of Goal representations in memory have used a change‐detection paradigm in which Source or Goal objects were substituted by objects of a different category. For instance, in one of the target events, an agent was shown going to/away from a TV, while in the memory phase the TV was switched to a cart (Lakusta & Landau, 2007). In these studies, the locus of the Source vulnerability might be within the representation of the landmark object itself, the spatial relation, and/or the (inferable) event associated with the object (different activities are associated with a TV set vs. a cart, and when these objects function as Goals, these activities lie in the future and may thus be foregrounded compared to cases when these objects function as Sources).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Source‐Goal Asymmetries in Motion Representation: Implications for Language Production and Comprehension

Papafragou

2010

Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent research has demonstrated an asymmetry between the origins and endpoints of motion events, with preferential attention given to endpoints rather than beginnings of motion in both language and memory. Two experiments explore this asymmetry further and test its implications for language production and comprehension. Experiment 1 shows that both adults and 4-year-old children detect fewer within-category changes in source than goal objects when tested for memory of motion events; furthermore, these groups produce fewer references to source than goal objects when describing the same motion events. Experiment 2 asks whether the specificity of encoding source ⁄ goal relations differs in both spatial memory and the comprehension of novel spatial vocabulary. Results show that endpoint configuration changes are detected more accurately than source configuration changes by both adults and young children. Furthermore, when interpreting novel motion verbs, both age groups expect more fine-grained lexical distinctions in the domain of endpoint configurations compared to that of source configurations. These studies demonstrate that a cognitive-attentional bias in spatial representation and memory affects both the detail of linguistic encoding during the use of spatial language and the specificity of hypotheses about spatial referents that learners build during the acquisition of the spatial lexicon.

show abstract

Section: Experiments 1a: Encoding Source/goal Objects In Memorysupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Source‐Goal Asymmetries in Motion Representation: Implications for Language Production and Comprehension

Papafragou

2010

Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, Papafragou (2010) found evidence for a goal bias when testing how adults and 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children remember goal and source landmark objects in computer animated events depicting an animate figure move from one object to another object (e.g., a fairy flying from a flower to a tree). Papafragou (2010) also reported a goal bias when testing adults’ and children’s memory for goal and source spatial relations in events portraying a self‐propelled inanimate object move to (or from) a goal (or source) reference object (e.g., a soccer ball moving onto a square) (see also Lakusta, 2005; Lakusta & Landau, 2007). A goal bias has also been reported by Regier and Zheng (2007), who tested discrimination of source and goal spatial relations.…”

Section: 3 the Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Language and Memory for Motion Events: Origins of the Asymmetry Between Source and Goal Paths

Lakusta

Landau

2012

Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When people describe motion events, their path expressions are biased toward inclusion of goal paths (e.g., into the house) and omission of source paths (e.g., out of the house). In this paper, we explored whether this asymmetry has its origins in people's non-linguistic representations of events. In three experiments, 4-year-old children and adults described or remembered manner of motion events that represented animate ⁄ intentional and physical events. The results suggest that the linguistic asymmetry between goals and sources is not fully rooted in non-linguistic event representations: linguistic descriptions showed the goal bias for both kinds of events, whereas non-linguistic memory for events showed the goal bias only for events involving animate, goal-directed motion. The findings are discussed in terms of the mapping between non-linguistic representations of goals and sources in language, focusing on the role that linguistic principles play in producing a more absolute goal bias from more gradient non-linguistic representations of paths.

show abstract

Using Language to Navigate the Infant Mind

Wagner

Lakusta

2009

Perspect Psychol Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do infants represent objects, actions, and relations in events? In this review, we discuss an approach to studying this question that begins with linguistic theory—specifically, semantic structures in language. On the basis of recent research exploring infant cognition and prominent linguistic analyses, we examine whether infants' representations of motion events are articulated in terms of the components proposed by Talmy (1985; e.g., path, manner) and whether infants' event representations are defined in terms of broad semantic roles (agent, patient, source, goal) as proposed by Jackendoff (1990) and Dowty (1991). We show how recent findings in infant cognition are consistent with the idea that the infant's representation of events is a close reflection of the linguistic categories. We especially highlight research that is explicitly guided by linguistic categories likely to have correlates in nonlinguistic cognition to illustrate the usefulness of using language to pose questions about early conceptual representations.

show abstract

Goal bias in non-linguistic Motion event representations: The role of intentionality

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Source‐Goal Asymmetries in Motion Representation: Implications for Language Production and Comprehension

Source‐Goal Asymmetries in Motion Representation: Implications for Language Production and Comprehension

Language and Memory for Motion Events: Origins of the Asymmetry Between Source and Goal Paths

Using Language to Navigate the Infant Mind

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About