The Role of Intentionality in Infants’ Prediction of Helping and Hindering

ABSTRACT The present research examined whether U.S. infants can recognize in others a pattern of helping or hindering after watching such behaviors across multiple scenarios. Infants at 17 months watched three familiarization events in which a person (recipient) failed to achieve various goals and another person (actor) always helped or hindered the recipient. In test, infants saw two events in yet another different scenario. In one event, the actor behaved consistently as before; in the other event, the actor behaved in the opposite way. In Experiment 1, the infants expected the helper to help the recipient again and were intrigued, as indicated by their prolonged looking, when the helper hindered the recipient. However, the infants did not form a clear expectation about the hinderer and looked equally at the two test events. Experiment 2 showed that when the intention to hinder was made more salient in familiarization, infants expected the hinderer to continue behaving so. Together, the present results underscore the role of intentionality in the process by which infants develop an expectation of others’ tendency to help or hinder another person.