Infants’ Attributions of Insides and Animacy in Causal Interactions

Abstract

Past work has found that infants show more interest when an object that has at least two properties of animate beings, such as engaging in self-generated motion and having fur, is shown to be hollow than when an object with none or one of these properties is revealed to be hollow. When an object is grabbed by a hand and moved to a new place, by 7 months of age, infants explain the motion of the object as due to the hand, and thus do not interpret this object as capable of self-generated motion. This constant application of force is called an "entraining" event. Other work has found that 6-month-old infants are sensitive to the reversals of causal roles in "launching" events (billiard-ball-like collisions), but not entraining events. Here, we examine whether 10-month-old infants explain the motion of the patient in a launching event as being due to the contact with the launching agent. Experiment 1 replicates past work, showing that infants look longer when a self-propelled object with animate features (fur or feathers) is shown to be hollow, compared to a similar object undergoing spatiotemporally identical motion entrained by a human agent. Experiment 2 finds that infants look equally at the agent and patient, both covered by fur or feathers, of a launching event when each is revealed to be hollow. Experiment 3 shows that infants look longer when a fur-covered causal patient is shown to be hollow compared to a plain-box causal agent, indicating that 10-month-old infants do not explain the motion of the causal patient of a launching event as due to the agent, even though they do so for an entraining event. This dissociation suggests the existence of multiple independent causal representations in the first year of life.

How to Tell a Dualist?

“…Remarkably, people also denied the innateness of epistemic traits that are plausibly innate, such as the distinction between animate/inanimate things—a trait evident in young infants (Kominsky, Li, & Carey, 2022; Setoh, Wu, Baillargeon, & Gelman, 2013) and nonhuman animals (Rosa Salva, Mayer, & Vallortigara, 2015). These results are in line with the empiricist bias, documented in past research (Berent et al., 2019; Berent et al., 2021; Wang & Feigenson, 2019).…”

Adaptive Education: Learning and Remembering with a Stone-Age Brain

“…Infants’ early understanding of causality has been linked to the development of animate agency. By 10 months, infants use animacy cues (e.g., the presence or absence of eyes) to classify objects (Kominsky et al, 2022 ) and by early childhood use such cues to draw inferences about item properties (such as whether an object has “insides”). Most children show an affinity for animate things, and children’s movies often assign animate properties to inanimate objects.…”