It is certainly not the case that the goals were removed entirely. The bowls at either end of the ramp
were the most colorful objects on the apparatus, and the doll interacted with them on every trial. Most
children were able to label the color difference between the bowls, and several children spontaneously
discussed the different placement of the goal objects on their board and the experimenter’s board. The
children were clearly aware of the presence of the objects as well as the relevant differences in the
objects used across the study. However, we did intend for these goals to be less salient than the sociofunctionally
relevant goals (houses) used in the directed motion events in Carpenter and colleagues’
(2005) study. It is possible that we overshot and that although our objects were salient enough to
be noticed, they were not salient enough to serve as proper goals. One piece of evidence that supports
this possibility is that children who chose to interact with the goal objects during the initial free play
session did not show a path bias. Personal experience with the objects, therefore, appeared to influence
how children integrated them into the event. Notice, however, that children who played with
the objects did not in general show a bias toward the goals; instead, they were equipotential between
the goal and path options, imitating path at the expense of goal on some trials and imitating goal at the
expense of path on other trials. This suggests that directed motion events themselves may be intrinsically
biased toward a path interpretation; special emphasis of some sort (from either personal experience
or social relevance) is needed to shift these events toward their goals. Contrary to our
hypothesis, these events are not neutral with respect to goals; in fact, they are biased away from them.