Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Recognizing where action units begin and end is an earlydeveloping skill that supports inferences about goals motivating others' action.One notable feature of goal-directed action is that segments are organized hierarchically.That is, action is interpreted as structured with respect to the goals and sub-goals of an actor, which can be recognized as corresponding to coarser-and finer-grained action units respectively.We report on the success of adapting a nonverbal paradigm to index hierarchical action segmentation in a developmental population.Results indicated that 3-and 4-year-old children, similar to adults in past studies, responded to segment boundaries with surges in attention that varied according to event granularity (e.g., fine-vs.coarsegrained).This effect was seen most strongly in children displaying superior memory for the events.
Authors: Meredith Meyer, Dare A. Baldwin, Kara Sage
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Office of Naval Research
OpenAlex ID: W2575242601