CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Varga, Balint |
|---|---|
| Title | Intuiting Informavores: An empirical investigation of the recognition and evaluation of epistemic actions in infancy |
| Summary | Research on cognitive development often portrays infants as little scientists, constructing intuitive theories to explain observed phenomena and actively gathering information to test these theories. This dissertation investigates whether infants can intuit when and why others pursue information, exploring the foundations that allow humans to interpret epistemic actions in their social environment. In Chapter 1, I motivate the research project and discuss the inductive challenges observers face in recognizing epistemic goals. I propose that preverbal infants may possess an intuitive theory of goal-directed action that includes expectations about how others seek information. This intuitive theory is proposed to contain three principles: instrumental relevance, drive toward novelty, and efficiency. Chapter 2 focuses on the first principle, instrumental relevance, which posits that individuals seek information that helps them achieve their higher-order goals. This chapter details Experiments 1 and 2, designed to assess whether 14-month-old infants expect an agent to seek information when uncertain about a goal object's location. We found that infants looked longer when a knowledgeable agent sought information unnecessarily, as opposed to an uncertain agent, which indicates an understanding that epistemic actions may be driven by uncertainty about goal-relevant states. Chapter 3 explores the second principle, drive toward novelty, which suggests that individuals are naturally inclined to seek information about new or unfamiliar objects. Experiment 3 aimed to determine if infants apply this principle when observing others’ behavior. Results indicated that infants expect agents to explore novel objects as opposed to familiar ones, providing evidence for the idea that infants use novelty as a cue for interpreting actions as epistemic. Chapter 4 investigates the third principle, efficiency, which proposes that individuals gather information in a way that maximizes benefits while minimizing costs. Experiment 4 tested whether infants expect agents to act efficiently when seeking information, choosing the more informative from two actions with equal cost. As hypothesized, infants looked longer when an agent chose a less informative action over a more informative one, suggesting that they expect epistemic behavior to be efficient. Chapter 5 presents two experiments examining whether infants and older children (4-year-olds) use a modal representation of others’ uncertainty (attributing beliefs representing a set of possibilities) when interpreting their behavior. The mixed results showed that while 4-year-olds (Experiment 6) might use such a representational scheme, the evidence for infants (Experiment 5) is inconclusive. Chapter 6 then explores infants' ability to evaluate expected information gain from their own perspective, with Experiments 7 and 8 focusing on whether and how 12-month-old infants can proactively assess the value of information before obtaining it. We designed a gaze-contingent paradigm to test infants' capacity to seek out advance information that could predict future events. The results suggested that while infants may evaluate information prospectively, previous information gain also influences their choices. Finally, in Chapter 7, I provide a general discussion integrating the findings from all the chapters and discuss some avenues for future research on humans’ interpretation of the epistemic dimensions of their conspecifics’ behavior. |
| Supervisor | Kovács, Ágnes Melinda; Csibra, Gergely |
| Department | Cognitive Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/varga_balint02.pdf |
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