Source and goal asymmetry in non-linguistic motion event representations

In language there is a bias to represent Goals (end points) over Sources (starting points). The current studies explored whether this bias originates in non-linguistic Motion event representations. Study 1 explored whether and how 12-month-old infants encode Goals and Sources in Motion events. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized to a toy duck moving to one of two Goal objects. During test, infants looked longer when the duck moved to a Different Goal rather than to a Different Location, suggesting that infants encoded the Goal. In Experiments 2 and 3 the objects were Sources rather than Goals. Infants did not show evidence for encoding the Source (Experiment 2), unless the Source was salient (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, infants were familiarized to a toy duck moving from one of two (salient) Source objects to one of two (ordinary) Goal objects. During test, infants encoded the Goal in preference to the Source, suggesting a non-linguistic Goal bias.; Study 2 further explored a non-linguistic Goal bias. Adults and four-year-old children were shown pairs of Motion events in which the second event changed Source, Goal, Figure, or Motion or had no change at all. After viewing the second event, participants judged whether the events were the same or different. In Experiments 5a/5b, Goal changes were correctly detected more often than Source changes, suggesting a non-linguistic Goal bias. However, this bias became weaker when the actor gazed at the Source rather than at the Goal while moving (Experiments 6a/6b) and when the events contained only inanimate objects (Experiments 7a/7b), suggesting that intentionality plays a key role in the representation of events, and the importance of Goals.