Motor competence as integral to attribution of goal

In a recent article, Gergely et al. (1995) presented some interesting data encumbered, however, by an interpretation we think the data do not support. There is, nevertheless, an interpretation they do support—one which, in our view, gives the data their interest. In order to contrast the authors’ interpretation with ours, we begin by presenting a simplified account of their experiment. The account is simplified not only for brevity, but also because we suspect that much of their procedure is window dressing and has no substantive bearing on the outcome; interested readers can of course find the complete experiment in the original article. Two groups of infants are shown computer animations in a traditional habituation /dishabituation paradigm. The experimental group is shown two circles of different size separated by a barrier. The smaller circle on the right (Fig. 1) jumps over the barrier, and makes contact with the larger circle on the left. The scene shown the control group is exactly the same, except for the important fact that, as shown in Fig. 1, there is no barrier between the two circles.