The Perception of Causality

Michotte, Albert

doi:10.4324/9781315519050

Cited by 274 publications

(345 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

303

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For instance, although there are no familiar content words in the sentence The blicket daxed the wug to the blorg, adults can infer that the event involved transfer and that dax means something kind of like give (Gilette, Gleitman, Gleitman, & Lederer, 1999;Kako, 2006;Snedeker & Gleitman, 2004 There is rich body of evidence showing that basic spatial and temporal cues play a critical role in distinguishing a causal event from a noncausal one (Leslie & Keeble, 1987;Leslie, 1984;Michotte, 1963;Muentener & Carey, 2010). This kind of causal perception has primarily been studied using simple motion events with two sub-events (e.g., one billiard ball rolling, and then another one rolling).…”

Section: Linking Language and Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking language and events: Spatiotemporal cues drive children's expectations about the meanings of novel transitive verbs

Kline

Snedeker²,

Schulz

2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do children map linguistic representations onto the conceptual structures that they encode? In the present studies, we provided 3-4 year old children with minimal-pair scene contrasts in order to determine the effect of particular event properties on novel verblearning. Specifically, we tested whether spatiotemporal cues to causation also inform children's interpretation of transitive verbs either with or without the causal/inchoative alternation (She broke the lamp/the lamp broke). In Experiment 1, we examined spatiotemporal continuity. Children saw scenes with puppets that approached a toy in a distinctive manner, and toys that lit up or played a sound. In the causal events, the puppet contacted the object, and activation was immediate. In the noncausal events, the puppet stopped short before reaching the object, and the effect occurred after a short pause (apparently spontaneously). Children expected novel verbs used in the inchoative transitive/intransitive alternation to refer to spatiotemporally intact causal interactions rather than to 'gap' control scenes. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the temporal order of sub-events, holding spatial relationships constant, and provided evidence for only one verb frame (either transitive or intransitive). Children mapped transitive verbs to scenes where the agent's action closely preceded the activation of the toy over scenes in which the timing of the two events was switched, but did not do so when they heard an intransitive construction. These studies reveal that children's expectations about transitive verbs are at least partly driven by their nonlinguistic understanding of causal events: children expect transitive syntax to refer to scenes where the agent's action is a plausible cause of the outcome. These findings open a wide avenue for exploration into the relationship between children's linguistic knowledge and their nonlinguistic understanding of events. During their first years of life, children develop rich and robust cognitive models of the world around them. They represent the differences between people and objects, make predictions about physical and social events, and learn complex patterns of causal information ( Baker, Saxe, & Tenenbaum, 2011;Luo, Kaufman, & Baillargeon, 2009;Sobel, Tenenbaum, & Gopnik, 2004;Spelke, 1990;Woodward, 1998). At the same time, they learn the structure and content of at least one language, acquiring representations that allow them to understand the speech around them and produce novel sentences of their own. LINKING LANGUAGE AND EVENTSRelatively little is known about how children map these linguistic representations onto the conceptual structures that they encode.A central property of human language is that there are systematic correspondences between the form of sentence (syntax) and its meaning (semantics) (Baker, 1988;Brown, 1958;Fillmore, 1968;Montague, 1970;Pinker, 1984). For instance, although there are no familiar content words in the sentence The blicket daxed the wug to the blorg, adults can infer that t...

show abstract

Section: Linking Language and Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking language and events: Spatiotemporal cues drive children's expectations about the meanings of novel transitive verbs

Kline

Snedeker²,

Schulz

2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…O conceito indica a centralidade da experiência direta em um ambiente, sem mediações. Heft relacionou a ideia de sistemas integrados com base na finalidade da ação de Gibson com as explicações de Edwin Holt (1873-1946, aluno de William James, sobre ação integrada. Gibson também reconheceu a influência de Holt sobre seus trabalhos, pois foi aluno de Holt em Princeton em 1926, tendo ali sido apresentado às ideias do Empirismo Radical de James (Hochberg, 1994).…”

Section: A R T I G O -E S T U D O S T E ó R I C O S O U H I S T ó R Iunclassified

“…Essa disposição ativa do organismo em relação ao mundo, fundada em realismo radical, defendida por Gibson aproxima-se das evidências de disposição intencional reunidas pelo psicólogo experimental belga Albert Michotte (1881Michotte ( -1965. Michotte (1946) Figura 2: Encontros fenomenológicos nas interações acadêmicas de James J. Gibson.…”

Section: A R T I G O -E S T U D O S T E ó R I C O S O U H I S T ó R Iunclassified

Fenomenologia experimental em David Katz e James J. Gibson

Castro

2017

RAG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…But focus on the issue of observation of connections between cause and effect has subsided in the recent Humean tradition. This is partly because of the persuasiveness of experiments such as those first performed by Michotte (1963), but furthermore because the existence of an observable connection is now generally admitted (pace radically empirical grievances) to be independent of the existence of a necessary connection of ontological dependence.…”

Section: Nonimplicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can parts cause their wholes?

Friend

2018

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Part-whole causation (PWC) is the thesis that some causes are part of their effects. PWC has been objected to because of its incompatibility with the criterion that causes not be spatially included within their effects and the criterion that causes and effects are ontologically distinct in some sense. This paper serves to undermine the sufficiency of these ways of objecting to PWC by showing that for each criterion either cause-effect relationships need not satisfy it or part-whole relationships can. A case-study of the collapse of Bridge 9340 is employed to facilitate the discussion.

show abstract

The Perception of Causality

Cited by 274 publications

References 0 publications

Linking language and events: Spatiotemporal cues drive children's expectations about the meanings of novel transitive verbs

Linking language and events: Spatiotemporal cues drive children's expectations about the meanings of novel transitive verbs

Fenomenologia experimental em David Katz e James J. Gibson

Can parts cause their wholes?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About