The results found here suggest that both the structure of the information within an event and children’s
prior experiences with particular event elements shape children’s understanding, as measured
by how they prioritize the event’s components. Previous work in general has found that children tend
to be biased toward goals, but we have argued that this bias reflects the nature of the events used
rather than the nature of the children. The directed motion events examined in this study structure
information rather differently from the functionally oriented events often used, and as a consequence,
we found children biased away from goal and toward path. However, we also found this bias itself to
be attenuated by children’s own experiences; children who spontaneously played with the goals
showed no preference between path and goal information. Further studies will be needed to tease
apart how these factors influence and interact with each other, and the imitation choice task is a
promising paradigm with which to investigate these questions further.