Kenward Ben
Department of Psychology Uppsala University.
Infancy. 2010 Jul;15(4):337-361. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2009.00018.x. Epub 2010 Jan 8.
It is known that young infants can learn to perform an action that elicits a reinforcer, and that they can visually anticipate a predictable stimulus by looking at its location before it begins. Here, in an investigation of the display of these abilities in tandem, I report that 10-month-olds anticipate a reward stimulus that they generate through their own action: .5 sec before pushing a button to start a video reward, they increase their rate of gaze shifts to the reward location; and during periods of extinction, reward location gaze shifts correlate with bouts of button pushing. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the infants have an expectation of the outcome of their actions: several alternative hypotheses are ruled out by yoked controls. Such an expectation may, however, be procedural, have minimal content, and is not necessarily sufficient to motivate action.
众所周知，年幼的婴儿能够学会执行一种能引出强化物的动作，并且他们能够通过在可预测刺激开始之前看向其位置来进行视觉预期。在此，在一项对这些能力协同表现的调查中，我报告称，10个月大的婴儿预期他们通过自己的动作产生的奖励刺激：在按下按钮开始视频奖励前0.5秒，他们将目光转向奖励位置的频率增加；在消退期，看向奖励位置的目光转移与按键行为相关。这些结果与婴儿对其行为结果有预期这一假设一致：通过匹配对照排除了几个替代假设。然而，这样的预期可能是程序性的，内容极少，并且不一定足以激发行动。
