2.3.3. Preliminary discussion

Comparing the bias effect across the four experiments, two main results emerged. First, consistent with the previous results, we found the bias to differentially affect performance according to the scope and the target of the intention. The bias effect was indeed significantly more important in superordinate conditions than in motor ones and in social conditions than in non-social ones. Second, this effect varied according to the amount of visual information available to the participants. It was significantly more important for superordinate intentions than for motor intentions when the amount of visual information was moderate and greater in the condition of high amount of information when the intention occurred in a social context, rather than in isolation.These results show that for a low amount of visual information, the prior expectations equally contributed to the inference of any type of intention. Yet, as the amount of visual information increased, a differential contribution of these expectations was observed according to the dimension of the intention.Together, these results confirm those we previously obtained. Crucially, they suggest that participants’ prior expectations contribute in a different way to the inference process depending on the type of intention that is focused on. We further consider these differences in the final discussion of the paper.