Adults, but not preschoolers or toddlers integrate situational constraints in their action anticipations: a developmental study on the flexibility of anticipatory gaze.

ABSTRACT: Recent theories stress the role of situational information in understanding others' behaviour. For example, the predictive coding framework assumes that people take contextual information into account when anticipating other's actions. Likewise, the teleological stance theory assumes an early developing ability to consider situational constraints in action prediction. The current study investigates, over a wide age range, whether humans flexibly integrate situational constraints in their action anticipations. By means of an eye-tracking experiment, 2-year-olds, 5-year-olds, younger and older adults (together N = 181) observed an agent repeatedly taking one of two paths to reach a goal. Then, this path became blocked, and for test trials only the other path was passable. Results demonstrate

SUBMITTER: Ganglmayer K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8324589 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature