Reasoning about collisions involving inert objects in 7.5‐month‐old infants

Kotovsky, Laura; Baillargeon, Renée

doi:10.1111/1467-7687.00129

Cited by 80 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…This study establishes a convergence between looking time measures (used here) and the action measures used in closely matched previous work [6]. This convergence may help validate sensitivity to contact causality as an index of causal understanding in infancy research [16,26,27,29,30].…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Nonetheless, prior research suggests that infants' expectations about spatial contact in the domain of physical outcomes vary depending on whether an outcome does or does not occur. In events that adults typically recognize as physical causal interactions, research has shown that infants (1) expect outcomes to occur on contact and (2) expect outcomes not to occur at a distance [16,[26][27][28][29][30]. For example, 7.5-month-old infants have been shown to expect an object to move upon contact from another object, and not to move if an object stops short of contacting it [27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In events that adults typically recognize as physical causal interactions, research has shown that infants (1) expect outcomes to occur on contact and (2) expect outcomes not to occur at a distance [16,[26][27][28][29][30]. For example, 7.5-month-old infants have been shown to expect an object to move upon contact from another object, and not to move if an object stops short of contacting it [27]. Similarly, infants who have seen a hand move behind an occluder and a box break apart expect the hand to have contacted the box if it breaks and expect the hand to have stopped short of contact if the box does not break; moreover, they do not have these expectations if the candidate cause is not a dispositional agent (e.g., is a train rather than a hand) [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Mind the Gap: Investigating Toddlers’ Sensitivity to Contact Relations in Predictive Events

Muentener¹,

Bonawitz²,

Horowitz³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Toddlers readily learn predictive relations between events (e.g., that event A predicts event B). However, they intervene on A to try to cause B only in a few contexts: When a dispositional agent initiates the event or when the event is described with causal language. The current studies look at whether toddlers’ failures are due merely to the difficulty of initiating interventions or to more general constraints on the kinds of events they represent as causal. Toddlers saw a block slide towards a base, but an occluder prevented them from seeing whether the block contacted the base; after the block disappeared behind the occluder, a toy connected to the base did or did not activate. We hypothesized that if toddlers construed the events as causal, they would be sensitive to the contact relations between the participants in the predictive event. In Experiment 1, the block either moved spontaneously (no dispositional agent) or emerged already in motion (a dispositional agent was potentially present). Toddlers were sensitive to the contact relations only when a dispositional agent was potentially present. Experiment 2 confirmed that toddlers inferred a hidden agent was present when the block emerged in motion. In Experiment 3, the block moved spontaneously, but the events were described either with non-causal (‘‘here’s my block’’) or causal (‘‘the block can make it go’’) language. Toddlers were sensitive to the contact relations only when given causal language. These findings suggest that dispositional agency and causal language facilitate toddlers’ ability to represent causal relationships.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mind the Gap: Investigating Toddlers’ Sensitivity to Contact Relations in Predictive Events

Muentener¹,

Bonawitz²,

Horowitz³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…For example, in the case of occlusion events, infants must learn to predict whether an object will be fully or only partly hidden when behind an occluder, and also how soon an object that moves behind an occluder will emerge from behind it; in the case of containment events, infants must learn to predict whether an object can be lowered inside a container, and also how much of an object lowered inside a container will protrude above it; and in the case of collision events, infants must learn to predict whether an object is likely to move when hit, and also how far it is likely to move (e.g. Arterberry, 1997;Aguiar & Baillargeon, 1999;Hespos & Baillargeon, 2001B;Kotovsky & Baillargeon, 2000;Oakes & Cohen, 1995;Sitskoorn & Smitsman, 1995;Spelke, Kestenbaum, Simons, & Wein, 1995a;Wang, Baillargeon, & Brueckner, 2004;Wang, Kaufman, & Baillargeon, 2003;Wilcox & Schweinle, 2003).…”

Section: The Incremental-knowledge Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

When the ordinary seems unexpected: evidence for incremental physical knowledge in young infants

Luo

Baillargeon

2005

Cognition

Self Cite

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According to a recent account of infants' acquisition of their physical knowledge, the incrementalknowledge account, infants form distinct event categories, such as occlusion, containment, support, and collision events. In each category, infants identify one or more vectors which correspond to distinct problems that must be solved. For each vector, infants acquire a sequence of variables that enables them to predict outcomes within the vector more and more accurately over time. This account predicts that infants who have acquired only a few of the variables in a sequence should err in two ways in violation-of-expectation tasks: (1) they should view impossible events consistent with their incomplete knowledge as expected (errors of omission), and (2) they should view possible events inconsistent with their incomplete knowledge as unexpected (errors of commission). Many reports have shown that infants who have not yet identified a variable in an event category produce errors of omission: they fail to view impossible events involving the variable as unexpected. However, there has been no report revealing errors of commission in infants' responses to possible events. The present research examined whether 3-and 2.5-monthold infants, whose knowledge of occlusion events is very limited, would produce errors of commission as well as errors of omission when responding to these events. At 3 months of age, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its upper edge. At 2.5 months, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its lower edge. These findings provide a new kind of evidence for the incremental-knowledge account, and more generally for the notion that infants, like older children and adults, engage in rule-based reasoning about physical events. KeywordsRule-based reasoning in infancy; Occlusion events; Errors of omission and commission

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“…Attention to movement type (e.g., flexible versus rigid) signals classes of objects that are animate versus inanimate and is critical in determining causality (Golinkoff, Harding, Carlson-Luden, & Sexton, 1984;Kotovsky & Baillargeon, 2000;Mandler, 2004;Cohen & Oakes, 1993;Poulin-Dubois, Lepage, & Ferland, 1996;Rakison, 2003;Wang, Kaufman, & Baillargeon, 2003). Interestingly, while we know a great deal about infants' attention to movement, their understanding of movement has not been studied in its own right.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Foundations for Verb Learning: Celebrating the Event

Pulverman¹,

Hirsh‐Pasek²,

Golinkoff³

et al. 2006

Action Meets Word

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This chapter evaluates whether difficulty in analyzing and conceptualizing nonlinguistic events contributes to the documented difficulty in verb learning. It shows that not only can infants discriminate between events based on these components but that they are also capable of forming some categories of events along these lines. Furthermore, there is a relationship between infants' ability to see certain distinctions in non-linguistic events and their level of language development. Infants can look within motion events to find the primitives that form the basis for verb learning and can even form categories based on these primitives.

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Reasoning about collisions involving inert objects in 7.5‐month‐old infants

Cited by 80 publications

References 47 publications

Mind the Gap: Investigating Toddlers’ Sensitivity to Contact Relations in Predictive Events

Mind the Gap: Investigating Toddlers’ Sensitivity to Contact Relations in Predictive Events

When the ordinary seems unexpected: evidence for incremental physical knowledge in young infants

Conceptual Foundations for Verb Learning: Celebrating the Event

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