@article{AdamReitenbachElsner2017, author = {Adam, Maurits and Reitenbach, Ivanina and Elsner, Birgit}, title = {Agency cues and 11-month-olds' and adults' anticipation of action goals}, series = {Cognitive Development}, volume = {43}, journal = {Cognitive Development}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {New York}, issn = {0885-2014}, doi = {10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.02.008}, pages = {37 -- 48}, year = {2017}, abstract = {For the processing of goal-directed actions, some accounts emphasize the importance of experience with the action or the agent. Other accounts stress the importance of agency cues. We investigated the impact of agency cues on 11-month-olds' and adults' goal anticipation for a grasping-action performed by a mechanical claw. With an eyetracker, we measured anticipations in two conditions, where the claw was displayed either with or without agency cues. In two experiments, 11-month-olds were predictive when agency cues were present, but reactive when no agency cues were presented. Adults were predictive in both conditions. Furthermore, 11-month-olds rapidly learned to predict the goal in the agency condition, but not in the mechanical condition. Adults' predictions did not change across trials in the agency condition, but decelerated in the mechanical condition. Thus, agency cues and own action experience are important for infants' and adults' online processing of goal-directed actions by non-human agents.}, language = {en} } @article{AdamReitenbachPapenmeieretal.2016, author = {Adam, Maurits and Reitenbach, Ivanina and Papenmeier, Frank and Gredeb{\"a}ck, Gustaf and Elsner, Claudia and Elsner, Birgit}, title = {actions, but not for mechanical claws}, series = {Meteoritics \& planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society}, volume = {44}, journal = {Meteoritics \& planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {New York}, issn = {0163-6383}, doi = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.05.001}, pages = {29 -- 37}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Previous research indicates that infants' prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds' action prediction. Infants' (N = 49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants' predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants' action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience.}, language = {en} }