Attending to what matters: Flexibility in adults¡¯ and infants¡¯ action perception

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• 作者：Jeff Loucks ; Jessica A. Sommerville
• 关键词：Intention ; Attention ; Action prediction ; Perceptual selection ; Motor representations ; Action observation
• 刊名：Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：December, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：116
• 期：4
• 页码：856-872
• 全文大小：633 K

文摘

Action perception is selective in that observers attend to and encode certain dimensions of action over others. But how flexible is action perception in its selection of perceptual information? One possibility is that observers consistently attend to particular dimensions of action over others across different contexts. Another possibility, tested here, is that observers flexibly vary their attention to different dimensions of action based on the context in which action occurs. We investigated 9.5-month-old infants¡¯ and adults¡¯ ability to attend to drop height under varying contexts¡ªaiming to drop an object into a narrow container versus a wide container. We predicted differential attention to increases in aiming height for the narrow container versus the wide container because an increase in aiming height has a differential effect on success (i.e., getting the object into the container) depending on the width of the container. Both adults and infants showed an asymmetry in their attention to aiming height as a function of context; in the wide container condition increases and decreases in aiming height were equally detectable, whereas in the narrow container condition observers more readily discriminated increases over decreases in aiming height. These results indicate that action perception is both selective and flexible according to context, aiding in action prediction and infants¡¯ social-cognitive development more broadly.