Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Events unfold over time, i.e., they have a beginning and endpoint. Previous studies have illustrated the importance ofendpoints for the perception and memory of various events (Lakusta & Landau, 2005, 2012; Papafragou, 2010; Regier & Zheng,2009; Strickland & Keil, 2011; Zacks & Swallow, 2007). However, this work has not compared endpoints to other potentiallysalient points in the internal temporal profile of events (e.g., midpoints). Building on the “picky puppet task” (Waxman &Gelman, 1986), we presented 4-to-5-year-old children and adults with a puppet that liked clips of events containing brief screenblanks that disrupted either the midpoint or the endpoint of the event. Both children and adults learned the puppet’s preferencesbetter (as evidenced by their extension to novel events) when the puppet liked midpoint compared to endpoint interruptions.These findings suggest a bias for event endpoints that is present from an early age.