  Woodward’s 1998 study on goal understanding in 6-month-olds is a good example of the pattern of recent work in this area. Infants watched a hand move across a stage and repeatedly grasp one of the two objects on opposite sides of the stage. The hand always moved along the same path to the same side of the stage and then always grasped the same object. After the infants habituated to this display, Woodward switched the location of the two objects. Now one of two events occurred: either the hand took a different path to grasp the same object it had always grasped (that object now being on the other side of the stage) or it took the same path as before, but now grasped the other object. Looking time showed that infants were more surprised when the hand followed the same path and grasped the other object than when it followed a new path and grasped the originally grasped object. This would make sense if the infants understood in some sense that the previously grasped object was the hand’s preferred goal. To see if this was really the basis of the babies’ looking responses, control conditions were included to rule out a variety of other possibilities.