Do infants have agency? – The importance of control for the study of early agency

Abstract

The question whether infants have a sense of agency has puzzled developmental scientists and philosophers alike. The central claim of our review is that control is a necessary feature of agency that has been neglected by empirical research so far. We review influential experimental paradigms on infants’ agency which have predominantly focused on infants’ detection of multi-sensory contingencies (e.g., the mobile paradigm). We argue that these paradigms show infants’ ability to integrate multi-sensory information and learn reinforced movements, but have failed to address whether infants have agentive control over these movements. We further argue that, without a measure of control, it is impossible to know whether the movements shown by infants reflect mere automatic responses or are indeed evidence of infants’ controlled actions. Finally, based on the criterion of action control, we derive concrete experimental suggestions for a minimal test of infants’ agency.