Work

Twelve-Month-Old Infants’ Encoding of Goal and Source Paths in Agentive and Non-Agentive Motion Events

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: Across languages and event types (agentive and non-agentive motion, transfer, change of state, attach/detach), goal paths are privileged over source paths in the linguistic encoding of events. Furthermore, some linguistic analyses suggest that goal paths are more central than source paths in the semantic and syntactic structure of motion verbs. However, in the non-linguistic memory of children and adults, a goal bias shows up only for events involving intentional, goal-directed, action. Three experiments explored infants' non-linguistic representations of goals and sources in motion events. The findings revealed that 12-month-old infants privilege goals over sources only when the event involves action of an agent. Thus, unlike language (but similar to the memory of children and adults), an endpoint bias in infant thought may be restricted to events involving goal-directed motion by an agent. These results raise the question of how children later learn to collapse over conceptual domains for purposes of coding paths in language.

Source: Language Learning and Development

DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2014.896168

Authors: Laura Lakusta, Susan Carey

Institutions: Montclair State University, Harvard University

Language: English

Topic: Categorization, perception, and language

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: The Notion of Source in Infants' Event Representations, Origin of Knowledge: Conceptual Continuity and Change