Twelve-month-old infants interpret action in context

Two experiments assessed infants' understanding that actions that occur in sequence may be related to an overarching goal. Experiment 1 tested whether embedding an ambiguous action (touching the lid of a box) in a sequence th at culminated with an action infants readily construe as goal-directed (gra sping a toy inside the box) would alter infants' construal of the ambiguous action. Having seen the ambiguous action in this context, infants later co nstrued this action in isolation as being directed at the toy within the bo x. Experiment 2 tested whether infants related the two actions on the basis of the temporal or the causal relation between them. When the causal relat ion was disrupted but the temporal relation was preserved, infants no longe r related the two actions. These findings indicate that 12-month-old infant s related single actions to overarching goals and that they do so by constr uing goal-directed action in a causal framework.