3-month-olds' goal representations are tested by exposing them to habituation stimuli showing an actor carrying out a simple goal oriented action (e.g. reaching for an object over a barrier and causing it to light up). Infants' expectations that this acction is motivated by a goal and should follow the principle of efficiency is studied by measuring infant looking time to efficient and inefficient reaches to the object once the barrier is removed.
Understanding the development of intelligence in a human infant is a key project of CBMM. This project engages the fundamental tradeoff between nature and nurture, or priors and data, and ultimately the origin of priors—how constraints are selected by evolution, encoded in genes, and instantiated in genetically wired brain circuits.