To see or not to see: infants prefer to follow the gaze of a reliable looker

Chow, Virginia; Poulin‐Dubois, Diane; Lewis, Judith A.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00726.x

Cited by 112 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 65 publications

(85 reference statements)

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“…For example, in an unreliable-labeler task, 16-month-olds looked longer at an agent who provided incorrect labels for familiar objects if she faced the objects than if she faced away from them (Koenig & Echols, 2003; for related work with preschoolers, see Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004;Koenig & Harris, 2005). Building on these results, Poulin-Dubois and her colleagues tested 14-to 16-month-olds in a series of unreliable-looker tasks: These examined whether infants, after watching an agent act in a manner either consistent or inconsistent with her epistemic states in a first context, would hold expectations about her behavior in a second context (Chow et al, 2008;Chow & Poulin-Dubois, 2009;Poulin-Dubois et al, 2011). In the first context, the agent expressed excitement ("Wow!")…”

Section: Epistemic States and The Consistency Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, additional experiments indicated that older infants realize that, just as they may see an object that an agent cannot see, an agent may see an object that they themselves cannot 46 see (e.g., Chow, Poulin-Dubois, & Lewis, 2008;Moll & Tomasello, 2004;Repacholi, 1998 Together, these results suggested that infants 12 months and older are capable of simple perspective-taking: They realize that an agent's representation of a scene may differ from their own, and in such cases they use the agent's perspective to interpret and respond to her actions.…”

Section: Perspective-taking In Older Infantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, additional experiments indicated that older infants realize that, just as they may see an object that an agent cannot see, an agent may see an object that they themselves cannot see (e.g., Chow, Poulin-Dubois, & Lewis, 2008;Moll & Tomasello, 2004;Repacholi, 1998). For example, Moll and Tomasello (2004) found that, when an agent looked behind an opaque barrier with expressions of excitement, 12-and 18-month-olds crawled or walked forward a short distance in order to peek behind the barrier and see what the agent could see.…”

Section: Perspective-taking In Older Infantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second context was adapted from prior tasks and varied across experiments, but in each case infants held expectations for the actions of the reliable but not the unreliable looker. Thus, infants were more likely to activate a light-box with their foreheads after watching the reliable looker perform this action (Poulin-Dubois et al, 2011; adapted from Gergely et al, 2002); they were more likely to peek around a barrier after watching the reliable looker express excitement as she looked behind the barrier (Chow et al, 2008; adapted from Moll & Tomasello, 2004); and they were more likely to detect a violation when the reliable looker searched for an object in the incorrect location (Chow & Poulin-Dubois, 2009; adapted from Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005).…”

Section: Epistemic States and The Consistency Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In an extensive series of experiments, Liszkowski and his colleagues showed that infants aged 12 months and older spontaneously pointed to inform ignorant but not knowledgeable agents (e.g., Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2007Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello, 2004;Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006). Thus, 12-month-olds pointed to inform an agent about the current location of an object she was looking for if she was absent when it was moved to a new location (e.g., Liszkowski et al, 2006), or if she was looking away when it fell to the floor (e.g., Liszkowski et al, 2008).Finally, additional experiments indicated that older infants realize that, just as they may see an object that an agent cannot see, an agent may see an object that they themselves cannot 46 see (e.g., Chow, Poulin-Dubois, & Lewis, 2008;Moll & Tomasello, 2004;Repacholi, 1998 Together, these results suggested that infants 12 months and older are capable of simple perspective-taking: They realize that an agent's representation of a scene may differ from their own, and in such cases they use the agent's perspective to interpret and respond to her actions.These results provided robust evidence that, by 12 months of age, infants' psychological reasoning is mentalistic rather than teleological in nature. However, these results left unclear the nature of psychological reasoning in the first year of life, and as such left open the possibility that psychological reasoning was initially teleological.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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IntroductionConsider the following scene: A man wearing a backpack is pacing leisurely back and forth in a large airport room. As he strolls, he occasionally crosses his arms, twirls the dangling straps of his backpack, or stuffs his hands in his pant pockets. At one point, he sits down, takes off his backpack, and removes from it a bag filled with assorted gummy bears; as he peers intently inside the bag, he selects and eats, one at a time, five red gummy bears.As adults, we would have no difficulty interpreting the man's actions. We might view his initial actions-pacing, crossing his arms, and so on-as intentional (as opposed to accidental) though not as directed toward any particular goal. In contrast, we might perceive his subsequent actions-removing the bag of gummy bears from his backpack and eating five red ones in succession-as both intentional and goal-directed. In analyzing these actions, we might build an explanation that attributes to the man a causally coherent set of motivational and epistemic mental states: He wants to eat gummy bears, he is particularly fond of red ones, and so when he spies one in the bag, he removes it and eats it.Next, consider a new scene: As the man is happily chewing on red gummy bears, he notices a second man approaching who is carrying two heavy suitcases. At this point, our scene might unfold according to different scenarios. In one, the first man greets the second man, offers to carry one of the suitcases, and holds out his bag of gummy bears. In another scenario, the first man continues to watch the second man but makes no move to approach him. In yet another scenario, the first man sticks out a leg to trip the second man, causing him to fall heavily.As adults, we would interpret and evaluate the first man's actions in the three scenarios very differently. In the first scenario, we might infer that the two men have a social group in common: They might be friends, coworkers, or relatives, for example. In the second scenario, we 3 would conclude that the two men are strangers. In both the first and second scenarios, we would view the first man's behavior as acceptable: Offering help and sharing food are expected prosocial behaviors in interactions with ingroup, but not outgroup, individuals. In contrast, the first man's behavior in the third scenario would seem to us beyond the pale: Unprovoked harmful actions, even against outgroup individuals, are generally viewed as unacceptable. We would categorize the first man as an antisocial lout, and we might file away distinctive characteristics as possible markers of a social group to be avoided in the future.Our discussion of the two scenes above illustrates the rich analyses that adults spontaneously engage in when watching others act. What are the developmental origins of these interpretations? Over the past 25 years, there has been a great deal of research on social cognition in infancy. This research can be roughly organized into two sets of questions that map neatly onto the two scenes above. First, when watching an agen...

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Section: Epistemic States and The Consistency Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Perspective-taking In Older Infantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, additional experiments indicated that older infants realize that, just as they may see an object that an agent cannot see, an agent may see an object that they themselves cannot see (e.g., Chow, Poulin-Dubois, & Lewis, 2008;Moll & Tomasello, 2004;Repacholi, 1998). For example, Moll and Tomasello (2004) found that, when an agent looked behind an opaque barrier with expressions of excitement, 12-and 18-month-olds crawled or walked forward a short distance in order to peek behind the barrier and see what the agent could see.…”

Section: Perspective-taking In Older Infantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Epistemic States and The Consistency Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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The Development of Social Understanding

Carpendale

Lewis

2015

Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science

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Understanding others is an essential aspect of being human. We review research and theory on the development of a range of skills constituting social understanding beginning in infancy with gaze‐following and gestures such as pointing. Given the importance attributed to false belief understanding in preschoolers, we review accounts of this development as well as criticism of these theories. Such debates now extend to current claims that even infants understand others' false beliefs, raising questions about preconceptions of the nature and origins of social awareness. The later developing social skills we turn to next remain relatively neglected in this literature. We discuss contributions from neuroscience for understanding social cognitive development such as neuroimaging and research on mirror neurons. There are many links between social cognition and children's social relations and, in particular, we focus on the key role of language in social cognitive development. We also review ways in which social understanding may influence social conduct and this is linked to the issues of trust and deception, as well as cooperation and moral development. Throughout, we highlight ways that research traditions are influenced by worldviews or preconceptions about the nature of mind, meaning, and knowledge, and emphasize the interconnections between social understanding and all other aspects of human life.

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Cultural Evolution

Chudek¹,

Muthukrishna²,

Henrich³

2015

The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

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Humans are a highly successful species who colonized most of the planet's major ecosystems long before agriculture, cities, and modern industrial technologies. Our success was certainly not due to our physical prowess, but perhaps surprisingly, also not due to our intelligence. In this chapter, we explain that what makes our species unique is not our raw brainpower per se, but what's in them. We are an evolved cultural species, completely reliant on a body of knowledge that has accumulated over generations. We explain how genetic evolution led us to become a cultural species and outline the evolved psychology that underlies our second line of inheritance—culture. We then discuss how that body of knowledge itself evolves as these psychological mechanisms play out in our societies and social networks. Cultural evolution builds adaptations, shapes our preferences and thinking, and sometimes leads to maladaptive practices. Our technology, practices, and know‐how also shape our genes, which in turn shape culture; genes and culture coevolve. Finally, we discuss how intergroup competition shapes cultural evolution, and how the processes of cultural group selection can help resolve evolutionary puzzles, such as the emergence of modern religions.

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To see or not to see: infants prefer to follow the gaze of a reliable looker

Cited by 112 publications

References 65 publications

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

The Development of Social Understanding

Cultural Evolution

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