The forum discussion critiques the validity of a study suggesting that infants possess mind-reading abilities, as reported in a Science Daily article. Participants argue that the experimental design is flawed, particularly questioning whether the presence of a human hand influenced infants' curiosity. The consensus is that while infants may demonstrate awareness of others' mental states, the methodology, including the reliance on look time and pacifier sucking as measures, lacks rigor. The discussion emphasizes the need for careful interpretation of results and suggests that further examination of the original study is necessary.
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Reading the study would probably be better.Math Is Hard said:I believe all they are inferring from this experiment is that infants have some awareness that others (people, caterpillars,etc.) have internal mental states and processes, and previously they thought this didn't happen until much later. The dependent measure (look time) is pretty standard in development psych studies with infants. They also sometimes use rate of pacifier sucking as a measure. Tricky stuff, because infants can't verbally report, so researchers take a little bit of a leap of faith that this action actually measures interest. And I agree with you, Evo, the hand could certainly be a confound. There's no way to say how they controlled for that without reading the study.