Determining and predicting specific intents in infancy

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The overarching goal of my research program is two-fold. First, I aim to develop a model of the infant intention-attribution system that incorporates the early detection of animacy and the cognitive processes that enable infants to recognize, interpret, predict, and learn from others' intentional actions. Second, I aim to use this model to more fully understand these abilities (or, perhaps, the differences in these abilities) in cases of mental and developmental disorders (i.e., autism, depression, and psychopathy) and in closely-related species (i.e., apes, monkeys). Within this framework, I have previously focused on investigations of infants' general ability to recognize goals. I propose here to extend the methods to better understand the fundamental, underlying abilities and mechanisms.