6-15 Month-Old Infants’ Social Judgment on the Goal-Directed Actions of Self-Propelled Objects

• Main Authors: Yi-Hsin Hsieh, 謝怡欣
• Other Authors: Feng-Ming Tsao
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/68347157990143797661

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 98 === The ability to interpret and evaluate the behavior of other individuals is essential for infants to explore the social world. Infants must be able to understand the actions and intentions of others, and make accurate evaluations and preference about them. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that infants are already able to evaluate the goal-directed actions and make accurate social judgment before their language fully developed. But the origins and development of this capacity are not well understood. The present research examined 6-、9-、12- and 15-month-old infants’ understanding of goal-directed actions. Six-、9-、12- and 15-month-old infants’ gaze was recorded by eye tracker as the infants observed videos of different actions toward the same actor. A series of three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 explored infants’ social judgment development, and found that infants preferred an individual who helps another to one who hinders another. Experiment 2 investigated whether the results of Experiment 1 were affected by infants’ perceptual bias. The result succeeded excluding the perceptual effects and found self-propelled behavior serving as cues to intentionality reading and helping infants make accurate social judgment. Experiment 3 examined infants’ social judgment when infants saw the same actions as Experiment 1, but an individual who hinder another was help behavior. Results demonstrated that 15-month-old infants can take contextual factors into account. The current study shown that 6-15 months old infants can understand the goal-directed actions. And infants at 9 months of age can make accurate social judgments. Finally, 15-month-old infants’ social judgment was affected by both social context and actor’s intention. The results demonstrated that the social judgment abilities are improving with ages.