Categories and Constraints in Causal Perception

Abstract

When object A moves adjacent to a stationary object, B, and in that instant A stops moving and B starts moving, people irresistibly see this as an event in which A causes B to move. Real-world causal collisions are subject to Newtonian constraints on the relative speed of B following the collision, but here we show that perceptual constraints on the relative speed of B (which align imprecisely with Newtonian principles) define two categories of causal events in perception. Using performance-based tasks, we show that triggering events, in which B moves noticeably faster than A, are treated as being categorically different from launching events, in which B does not move noticeably faster than A, and that these categories are unique to causal events (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, we show that 7- to 9-month-old infants are sensitive to this distinction, which suggests that this boundary may be an early-developing component of causal perception (Experiment 3).

Psychosemantics and the Rich/Thin Debate1

“…However, the putative cases of high-level content I'll be concerned with here are not plausibly construed as resulting from cognitive penetration. For example, the perceptual attunement to causation that I'll discuss presently is found in very young infants (Leslie & Keeble 1987;Saxe & Carey 2006;Kominsky et al 2017), and can come apart from a perceiver's beliefs about whether a display is genuinely causal (Michotte 1963: 85;Scholl & Tremoulet 2000: 306; although see Rips 2011). 15.…”

“…It would plausibly have been adaptive for our ancestors to be sensitive to the difference between launch-like and trigger-like events. It is a constraint of Newtonian mechanics that if one object contacts another, then, no matter their relative masses, the second can move at a speed at most double the speed of the first based on the force of their collision alone (Kominsky et al 2017). If the second object moves at more than double the speed of the first, then there must have been a hidden force that contributed to its movement.…”

“…Moreover, a recent visual search study suggests that within the class of causal collisions, vision draws a boundary between launch-like and trigger-like events. Kominsky et al (2017) showed subjects three events sideby-side and required them to indicate which was the "asymmetric" event-the one in which two objects moved at different speeds. Asymmetric events could either involve the first object moving at three times the speed of the second (3:1 events), or the second moving at three times the speed of the first (1:3 events).…”

“…For example, the perceptual attunement to causation that I'll discuss presently is found in very young infants (Leslie & Keeble ; Saxe & Carey ; Kominsky et al. ), and can come apart from a perceiver's beliefs about whether a display is genuinely causal (Michotte : 85; Scholl & Tremoulet : 306; although see Rips ).…”

How Children Identify Events from Visual Experience

“…How children identify events from visual experience is the topic of a small but growing literature on event perception (Baillargeon, Li, Gertner & Wu, 2011;Baldwin, Baird, Saylor, & Clark, 2001;Bunger, Skordos, Trueswell, & Papafragou, 2016;Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2010;Kominsky et al, 2017;Radvansky & Zacks, 2014;Spelke, Phillips & Woodward, 1995;Stahl, Romberg, Roseberry, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2014;Tatone, Geraci, & Csibra, 2015;Ünal, Trueswell, & Papafragou, 2017) and a larger but separate literature on the acquisition of verbs labeling events of different types (Bowerman & Choi, 2001;Gleitman, 1990;Pinker, 1989;Fisher, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1991;Tomasello & Merriman, 2014, among many others). However, in this work events are typically visually available in their entirety.…”