Journal
COGNITION
Volume 130, Issue 2, Pages 204-216Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.002
Keywords
Social cognition; Cognitive development; Goal inference; Emotion; Theory of mind
Categories
Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD023103, HD 23103, R37 HD023103] Funding Source: Medline
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Identifying the goal of another agent's action allows an observer to make inferences not only about the outcomes the agent will pursue in the future and the means to be deployed in a given context, but also about the emotional consequences of goal-related outcomes. While numerous studies have characterized the former abilities in infancy, expectations about emotions have gone relatively unexplored. Using a violation of expectation paradigm, we present infants with an agent who attains or fails to attain a demonstrated goal, and reacts with positive or negative affect. Across several studies, we find that infants' attention to a given emotional display differs depending on whether that reaction is congruent with the preceding goal outcome. Specifically, infants look longer at a negative emotional display when it follows a completed goal compared to when it follows a failed goal. The present results suggest that infants' goal representations support expectations not only about future actions but also about emotional reactions, and that infants in the first year of life can relate different emotional reactions to conditions that elicit them. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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