Infants expect agents to minimize the collective cost of collaborative actions

Olivier Mascaro, Gergely Csibra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This paper argues that human infants address the challenges of optimizing, recognizing, and interpreting collaborative behaviors by assessing their collective efficiency. This hypothesis was tested by using a looking-time study. Fourteen-month-olds (N = 32) were familiarized with agents performing a collaborative action in computer animations. During the test phase, the looking times were measured while the agents acted with various efficiency parameters. In the critical condition, the agents’ actions were individually efficient, but their combination was either collectively efficient or inefficient. Infants looked longer at test events that violated expectations of collective efficiency (p =.006, d = 0.79). Thus, preverbal infants apply expectations of collective efficiency to actions involving multiple agents.

Original languageEnglish
Article number17088
JournalScientific Reports
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022

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