\#source 'research/teleological stance -- csibra and gergely.doc'
\#source 'lectures/mindreading and joint action - philosophical tools (ceu budapest 2012-autumn fall)/lecture05 actions intentions goals'
\#source 'lectures/mindreading and joint action - philosophical tools (ceu budapest 2012-autumn fall)/lecture06 goal ascription teleological motor'
When do human infants first track goal-directed actions and not just movements?
Here's a classic experiment from way back in 1995.
The subjects were 12 month old infants.
They were habituated to this sequence of events.
Gergely et al 1995, figure 1
There was also a control group who were habituated to a display like this one but with the central barrier moved to the right, so that the action of the ball is 'non-rational'.
For the test condition, infants were divided into two groups. One saw a new action, ...
... the other saw an old action.
Now if infants were considering the movements only and ignoring information about the goal, the 'new action' (movement in a straight line) should be more interesting because it is most different.
But if infants are taking goal-related information into acction, the 'old action' might be unexpected and so might generate greater dishabituation.
Gergely et al 1995, figure 3
Gergely et al 1995, figure 5
‘by the end of the first year infants are indeed capable of taking the intentional stance (Dennett, 1987) in interpreting the goal- directed behavior of rational agents.’
\citep[p.\ 184]{Gergely:1995sq}
‘12-month-old babies could identify the agent’s goal and analyze its actions causally in relation to it’
\citep[p.\ 190]{Gergely:1995sq}
You might say, it's bizarre to have used balls in this study, that can't show us anything about infants' understanding of action.
But adult humans naturally interpret the movements of even very simple shapes in terms of goals.
So using even very simple stimuli doesn't undermine the interpretation of these results.
Heider and Simmel, figure 1
Consider a related study by Woodward and colleagues.
(It's good that there is converging evidence from different labs, using quite different stimuli.)
Woodward et al 2001, figure 1
'Six-month-olds and 9-month-olds showed a stronger novelty response (i.e., looked longer) on new-goal trials than on new-path trials (Woodward 1998). That is, like toddlers, young infants selectively attended to and remembered the features of the event that were relevant to the actor’s goal.'
\citep[p.\ 153]{woodward:2001_making}
Consider a further experiment by \citet{Csibra:2003jv}.
This is just like the first ball-jumping experiment except that here infants see the action but not the circumstances in which it occurs.
Do they expect there to be an object in the way behind that barrier?
Csibra et al 2003, figure 6
I already mentioned this classic study by Heider and Simmel.
This kind of study has been done with human adults quite a bit since then.
It is quite tempting to suppose that what we see here is automatic ascription of goals in adults.
Heider and Simmel, figure 1
[Here I'm not trying to provide evidence, only to explain what the claim commits us to.]
Recall this habituation experiment.
they suggets that both
The new Gergely et al experiment about action is based on the same habituation technique.
If I had more time, I'd tell you a long story about speech and action.
Maybe some of us will get together another time and I can tell you that story then.
(*nb: \citep{zwickel:2010_interference} also argue for perceptual categories in perceiving actions, and do so by comparison with pop-out effects for orientations.)
Subjects have to judge whether the dot is to the left or the right of the triangle (from their perspective).
If you think this is just a triangle, then it doesn't have a left or right so there's no congruent or incongruent.
But if you think the triangle performs goal directed actions, then in the figure on the top right, the dot is left of the triangle from your point of view but right of the triangle from its point of view.
Could there be altercentric interference?
Zwickel et al 2011, figure 1
Here are the results.
When the triangle makes random movements: there's no difference in RT between congruent and incongruent conditions. (As you'd expect---this just shows that there's nothing wrong with the setup.)
(The experiment involved comparing neurotypical (ordinary) subjects with AS subjects; that's interesting but too complex for us so we'll just focus on the neurotypical subjects' perforamnce.)
Could there be altercentric interference?
Zwickel et al 2011, figure 2
What can we conclude?
For adults, tracking information about goals makes one susceptible to interference from other other's perspective---it makes one susceptible to evaluting left and right from another's point of view.
This altercentric interference effect is a long way short of showing that the goal ascription is automatic or perceptual.
After all, such interference might be a consequence of thinking reflectively about the goals of the objects.
But it is at least a step in the direction in that it shows that, in adults, goal ascription can at least have effects on automatic processes.
(If automatic processes are informationally encapsulated, then this is evidence that goal ascription is automatic.)
(*Other evidence: \citep{Gao:2010,Teufel:2010})
Zwickel et al 2011, figure 1
altercentric interference