Humans comprehend the actions of others by making inferences about intentional mentalstates of another. However, little is known about how this capacity develops and whether thisis shared with other animals. Here we show the ontogenetic and evolutionary foundations ofthis ability by comparing the eye movements of 8- and 12-month-old human infants, adults andchimpanzees as they watched videos presenting goal-directed and non-goal-directed actionsby an actor. We find that chimpanzees anticipate action goals in the same way as do humanadults. Humans and chimpanzees, however, scan goal-directed actions differently. Humans,particularly infants, refer to actors’ faces significantly more than do chimpanzees. In humanadults, attentional allocation to an actor’s face changes as the goal-directed actions proceed.In the case of non-goal-directed actions, human adults attend less often to faces relative togoal-directed actions. These findings indicate that humans have a predisposition to observegoal-directed actions by integrating information from the actor.
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