Contributions of Motor and Social Milestones to Infants' Intention Understanding

描述（由申请人提供）：超越人类行为的表面现象并对动机他们的意图进行推断的能力代表了一项重大的发展成就，对社会互动以及社会，认知和语言发展至关重要。研究表明，意图理解起源于婴儿期，关键的发展转变发生在第一年年底。然而，重要的问题仍然是潜在的发展的意图理解的机制。拟议的研究的总体目标是提供洞察意图理解如何发展。特别是，这项建议将揭示如何运动的成就和经验，在联合注意与社会合作伙伴的互动有助于在婴儿期的意图理解。核心假设是婴儿通过以下两种方式来构建对意图的理解：（1）通过强调自己意图的运动经验（手段-目的行为和自我运动），以及（2）通过联合注意的经验。 随着婴儿开始独立活动，社会交往的频率越来越高。提出了两项研究。在这两项研究中，关键变量--意图理解--都是通过对婴儿解释和预测能力的实验测试来评估的 一个正在进行的失败的达成行动的预期结果。研究1采用年龄保持不变的设计，以检查运动与运动前8.5个月的婴儿的运动行为，联合注意力和意图理解之间的关联。关键的问题是运动婴儿是否比年龄匹配的运动前婴儿更容易表现出意图理解和参与联合注意。研究2采用纵向设计，研究了同一婴儿在自我运动开始前后的运动行为、联合注意和意图理解。这种纵向设计允许检查的因素， 预测在向自我运动过渡过程中意图理解的变化。所提出的方法是创新的，因为它使用的措施相结合的在线行动处理，实验室任务的社会认知知识，以及社会互动的自然主义措施，以调查出现的概念成就在三个关键领域的交叉点：电机，社会和认知。拟议的研究是重要的，因为它有望扩大理解的机制发展的意图理解，一个关键的发展成就，是儿童的学习，语言发展和社会能力的基础。阐明有助于意图理解出现的因素将对理解典型的发展以及当社会认知不遵循典型的发展路径时的理解和干预（例如，在自闭症谱系障碍的情况下）。最终，了解意图理解如何发展有可能扩大对婴儿发展的理解，并帮助儿童充分发挥其健康和富有成效的生活潜力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to transcend the surface appearance of human actions and make inferences about the intentions that motivate them represents a major developmental achievement that is crucial to social interaction as well as to social, cognitive, and linguistic development. Research has demonstrated that intention understanding originates in infancy, with key developmental shifts occurring at the end of the first year. However, important questions remain concerning the mechanisms underlying the development of intention understanding. The overall objective of the proposed research is to provide insight into how intention understanding develops. In particular, this proposal will reveal how motor achievements and experience in joint-attentive interactions with social partners contribute to intention understanding in infancy. The central hypothesis is that infants construct an understanding of intention (1) through motor experiences (means-end behaviors and self-locomotion) that highlight their own intentionality, and (2) through experiences in joint-attentive social interactions that occur with increasing frequency as infants begin to locomote independently. Two studies are proposed. In both studies, the key variable-intention understanding-is assessed through an experimental test of infants' ability to interpret and predict the intended outcome of an ongoing failed reaching action. Study 1 uses an age-held- constant design to examine associations between motor behavior, joint attention, and intention understanding in locomotor vs. prelocomotor 8.5-month-olds. The key question is whether locomotor infants are more likely to demonstrate intention understanding and engage in joint attention than age-matched prelocomotor infants. Study 2 uses a longitudinal design to examine motor behavior, joint attention, and intention understanding in the same infants both before and after the onset of self-locomotion. This longitudinal design allows examination of the factors that predict changes in intention understanding across the transition to self-locomotion. The proposed approach is innovative because it uses a combination of measures of online action processing, laboratory tasks of social-cognitive knowledge, as well as naturalistic measures of social interaction to investigate the emergence of a conceptual achievement at the intersection of three key domains: motor, social, and cognitive. The proposed research is significant because it is expected to expand understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of intention understanding-a critical developmental achievement that is foundational for children's learning, language development, and social competence. Shedding light on the factors that contribute to the emergence of intention understanding will have broad implications both for understanding typical development and for understanding and intervening when social cognition does not follow typical developmental pathways (e.g., in the case of autism spectrum disorder). Ultimately, knowledge of how intention understanding develops has the potential to expand understanding of infant development and to help children achieve their full potential for healthy and productive lives.