De. Montgomery et Da. Montgomery, The influence of movement and outcome on young children's attributions of intention, BR J DEV PS, 17, 1999, pp. 245-261
Two studies investigated preschoolers' ability to infer an actor's intended
goal based upon the perceptual properties of the actor's movement. Scenes
were presented showing a computer-generated display in which a circle persi
stently jumped and rebounded off wall. One of three outcomes occurred: the
acting circle reached its target, it reached an outcome opposite the target
of its persistent movement (non-goal condition), or it reached neither tar
get. Children accurately inferred the acting circle's goal in Expt 1 except
for the S-year-olds in the non-goal condition. Experiment 2 modified the n
on-goal condition so that the passive movements were not increasingly close
r to the non-goal, resulting in above-chance performance for both age group
s ( p < .01). Taken together, these findings suggest that by age 3 children
will account for how an actor is moving when identifying its intended goal
and will then distinguish the inferred goal from the eventual outcome of t
he act. Implications of these findings for the relation between outward fea
tures of motion and the development of mental concepts are discussed.