Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 26 September 2008:
Vol. 321. no. 5897, pp. 1831 - 1834
DOI: 10.1126/science.1161437
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Infants' Perseverative Search Errors Are Induced by Pragmatic Misinterpretation

József Topál,1* György Gergely,1,2 Ádám Miklósi,3 Ágnes Erdohegyi,3 Gergely Csibra2,4

Having repeatedly retrieved an object from a location, human infants tend to search the same place even when they observe the object being hidden at another location. This perseverative error is usually explained by infants' inability to inhibit a previously rewarded search response or to recall the new location. We show that the tendency to commit this error is substantially reduced (from 81 to 41%) when the object is hidden in front of 10-month-old infants without the experimenter using the communicative cues that normally accompany object hiding in this task. We suggest that this improvement is due to an interpretive bias that normally helps infants learn from demonstrations but misleads them in the context of a hiding game. Our finding provides an alternative theoretical perspective on the nature of infants' perseverative search errors.

1 Research Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest H-1132, Hungary.
2 Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest H-1051, Hungary.
3 Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest H-1117, Hungary.
4 School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1 E7HX, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: topaljozsef{at}gmail.com

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Comment on "Infants' Perseverative Search Errors Are Induced by Pragmatic Misinterpretation".
J. P. Spencer, E. Dineva, and L. B. Smith (2009)
Science 325, 1624
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Response to Comment on "Infants' Perseverative Search Errors Are Induced by Pragmatic Misinterpretation".
J. Topal, M. Toth, G. Gergely, and G. Csibra (2009)
Science 325, 1624
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Like Infant, Like Dog.
M. Tomasello and J. Kaminski (2009)
Science 325, 1213-1214
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Differential Sensitivity to Human Communication in Dogs, Wolves, and Human Infants.
J. Topal, G. Gergely, A. Erdohegyi, G. Csibra, and A. Miklosi (2009)
Science 325, 1269-1272
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)