Infants Actively Construct and Update Their Representations of Physical Events: Evidence from Change Detection by 12-Month-Olds

Abstract

The present research investigates the effects of top-down information on 12-month-olds’ representations of physical events, focusing on their ability to detect an object change across different events. Infants this age typically fail to detect height changes in events with tubes even though they successfully do so in events with covers. In Experiment 1, infants who saw a tube event in which objects did not interact successfully detected a change in an object’s height, suggesting that object interaction affects infants’ categorization of physical events. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the fine-grained process of event representation. In Experiment 2, infants detected the change in the tube event if they were led by pretest exposure to believe that the event was conducted with a cover. In Experiment 3, infants who initially believed so updated their representation if shown a tube before object interaction occurred (but not after). Together, these findings provide new evidence that infants, like older children and adults, actively construct physical events. Whether they notice a change depends on their existing knowledge and the current representation of the event.

Five-month-old infants attribute inferences based on general knowledge to agents

“…Because the present research examined the integration of psychological and physical reasoning in young infants, this juxtaposition might give rise to the worry that infants could fail in the inference condition, not because they were unable to track information gathered through inference, but because the procedure chosen was less than optimal for revealing their physical-reasoning capacity. In recent years, however, several reports have used a single-event, paused-scene procedure to study various facets of infants' physical reasoning, with no ill effects (Lin et al, 2021;Stavans & Baillargeon, 2018;Stavans et al, 2019;Wang & Goldman, 2016;. There was thus little apriori reason for concern, and the positive results of the inference condition confirmed that the procedure selected was appropriate for the present research.…”

Five-Month-Old Infants Attribute Inferences Based on General Knowledge to Agents

“…Because the present research examined the integration of psychological and physical reasoning in young infants, this juxtaposition might give rise to the worry that infants could fail in the inference condition, not because they were unable to track information gathered through inference, but because the procedure chosen was less than optimal for revealing their physical-reasoning capacity. In recent years, however, several reports have used a single-event, paused-scene procedure to study various facets of infants' physical reasoning, with no ill effects (Lin et al, 2021;Stavans & Baillargeon, 2018;Stavans et al, 2019;Wang & Goldman, 2016;. There was thus little apriori reason for concern, and the positive results of the inference condition confirmed that the procedure selected was appropriate for the present research.…”

Violations of expectation trigger infants to search for explanations

“…Although the findings described above could potentially implicate preverbal recognition 157 of explanations, other evidence suggests that infants struggle to recognize explanations for 158 surprising events. For example, Wang & Goldman (2016) found that 12-month-old infants 159 successfully used information that was presented before a surprising event, such that they were 160 able to revise their expectations of the event's outcome. In contrast, when the same information 161 was presented after the event-thereby providing an explanation for what had already 162 happened-infants seemed unable to integrate this new information into their event 163…”