Means‐End Behavior in Young Infants: The Interplay of Action Perception and Action Production

In 2 experiments, the interplay of action perception and action production was investigated in 6‐month‐old infants. In Experiment 1, infants received 2 versions of a means‐end task in counterbalanced order. In the action perception version, a preferential looking paradigm in which infants were shown an actor performing means‐end behavior with an expected and an unexpected outcome was used. In the action production version, infants had to pull a cloth to receive a toy. In Experiment 2, infants' ability to perform the action production task with a cloth was compared to their ability to perform the action production task with a less flexible board. Finally, Experiment 3 was designed to control for alternative low‐level explanations of the differences in the looking times toward the final states presented in Experiment 1 by only presenting the final states of the action perception task without showing the initial action sequence. Results obtained in Experiment 1 showed that in the action perception task, infants discriminated between the expected and the unexpected outcome. This perceptual ability was independent of their actual competence in executing means‐ end behavior in the action production task. Experiment 2 showed no difference in 6‐month‐olds' performance in the action production task depending on the properties of the support under the toy. Similarly, in Experiment 3, no differences in looking times between the 2 final states were found. The findings are discussed in light of theories on the development of action perception and action production.