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Max Planck Institute
About MPI

 

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is an institute of the German Max Planck Society. Our mission is to undertake basic research into the psychological,social and biological foundations of language. The goal is to understand how our minds and brains process language, how language interacts with other aspects of mind, and how we can learn languages of quite different types.

The institute is situated on the campus of the Radboud University. We participate in the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, and have particularly close ties to that institute's Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging. We also participate in the Centre for Language Studies. A joint graduate school, the IMPRS in Language Sciences, links the Donders Institute, the CLS and the MPI.

 

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Birgit Knudsen defends PhD on March 20

Do young infants actively use their sensitivity to other people's beliefs when interacting with them? Yes, they do, as Birgit Knudsen discovered during her dissertation research at MPI's Communication before Language group. She will defend her thesis 'Infants' appreciation of others' mental states in prelinguistic communication: A second-person approach to mind-reading' on March 20 at 13:30, in the Radboud University aula.

Birgit Knudsen defends PhD on March 20

Photo by Aaron Curtis.

March 14, 2012

After years of experimental research, psychologists still don't know from what age young infants start to understand the actions and behaviour of the people around them. In order to understand infants' cognitive processing, psychologists usually track infants' eye movements while the infants watch an adult performing a task. Knudsen, however, directly focussed on the ways that babies react to information they get from their environment. 

Point to new location

In her first study, she investigated if 18- and 24-month-old infants correct an adult who is mistaken about the location of an object (a toy) before the adult begins searching in the wrong (previous) location. Both age groups corrected the adult by pointing to the object's new location when the adult didn't know about the location change and showed intend to find the toy. "This study proves that infants take others' intentions and knowledge states into account when responding to their actions," Knudsen states in her dissertation.

Pointing baby

Photo by Igor Jandric.

Another study, with even younger infants, suggested that already by 12 months of age, infants tailor their responses to what others know or do not know, taking the others' emotional attitude (positive or negative) into account. Birgit Knudsen"My studies consistently show that infants use their theory of mind abilities and tailor their communicative acts accordingly," Knudsen says. "Infants are able to communicate their sensitivity to others' beliefs spontaneously and appropriately across different contexts."

Birgit.Knudsen@mpi.nl

 

Last checked 2012-05-04 by Myrna Tinbergen

Max Planck Institute
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