How infants perceive a simple causal event.

Four experiments examined 10-mo-old infants' causal event perception. Exp 1 replicated previous studies except that the specific objects used as agent and recipient varied from trial to trial. Under these conditions infants did not process the causality. Instead they keyed on specific temporal and spatial differences among the events. Exp 2 showed that infants notice a change in the particular agent performing either a causal or noncausal action. Exp 3 showed that infants do not notice a change in the type of action done to a particular recipient. Exp 4 demonstrated that infants do not pay attention to the object used as a recipient. As a whole, the results indicate that 10-mo-old infants perceive the causality of simple events by associating a specific agent with the causal action. These results provide more support for an information-processing view than for the view that infants have a causal module. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal processing: Origins and development.

Reviews evidence on the origins and development of causal processing. Research suggests that causal processing first occurs around 3 months of age, in perception of motion continuity across two objects, as in one ball colliding with another. The temporal integration limit to the perception of continuity and, hence, causal relation may be set by the temporal integration function of iconic processing. Events of this kind may form the basis for the use of cues of temporal contiguity, spatial contiguity, temporal order, and similarity in causal processing at later ages and higher levels. The same cues underlie causal processing of event relations made for functional reasons between plans or intentions and behavioral outcomes. Causal processing is probably automatic, rather than controlled, to begin with. Other suggestions for the origins of causal processing include concrete, familiar event sequences; human intended action; generative relations; and observation of regularity and covariation. Evidence suggests that each of these plays a role in the development of causal processing. Perception of generative relations may be the most basic of them, and observation of regularity and covariation is probably the last of the four, developmentally, to be used in causal processing. Virtually nothing is known about how different types of causal processing may be developmentally linked or how they originate and develop. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant sensitivity to trajectory forms.

The authors investigated whether infants are sensitive to visual event trajectory forms, and whether they are sensitive to the underlying dynamics of trajectory forms. The authors habituated 8-month-old infants to a videotaped event run either forward or reversed in time and then switched them to the same event run in the opposite direction. Infants dishabituated when switched to the event with the novel direction in time, indicating sensitivity to the form of the trajectory. Infants exhibited equivalent habituation rates and looking times for forward and reversed events, thus failing to provide evidence that infants are sensitive to the underlying dynamics. In a partial replication of this first experiment, the same pattern of results was found. Both experiments revealed infant sensitivity to the trajectory forms, but not the underlying dynamics of events. The authors discuss implications for methods used in infant event perception studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Producing and processing self-propelled motion in infancy.

Three experiments investigated 5- through 8-month-olds' ability to encode self-propelled and caused motion and examined whether processing of motion onset changes when crawling begins. Infants were habituated (Experiments 1 and 2) or familiarized (Experiment 3) with simple causal and noncausal launching events. They then viewed the caused-to-move and self-propelled objects from the events both stationary and side-by-side, and their preferential looking to the objects was assessed. Results revealed that 5- and 6-month-olds displayed a different pattern of looking than did 8-month-olds. More notably, noncrawling 7-month-olds and 7-month-olds with crawling experience also demonstrated such a differential pattern. These data suggest that processing of motion onset changes in concert with the commencement of self-locomotion. Findings are discussed in reference to the mechanisms underlying infants' ability to recognize self-propelled motion and the scope of the relationship between action production and action perception in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Crediting causality.

The crediting causality hypothesis states that when people attribute causality for an outcome, each individual event in the sequence leading to the outcome is evaluated as to how much it changed the probability of the outcome, given what had already occurred. Causality is then assigned on the basis of the relative contributions. In 4 experiments, college students show this effect both for noncausal sequences, in which previous experiments suggest that the last event to occur is most causal, and for causal sequences, in which previous experiments suggest that the first event to occur is most causal. Both the order in which events occur and the order in which people learn about events affect causal attributions. Mutability is ruled out as an explanation, although it may contribute to the assessment of probabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing it happen and knowing how it works: how children understand the relation between perceptual causality and underlying mechanism

Two experiments studied how 5- to 10-year-olds integrate perceptual causality with their knowledge of the underlying causal mechanism. Children learned about 2 devices by which a ball dropped into one end of a box made a bell ring at the other end, either immediately (contiguous mechanism) or after a delay (noncontiguous mechanism). When 1 ball was dropped first and a 2nd ball was dropped after a delay, and then the bell rang immediately, 5- and 7-year-olds chose the contiguous cause regardless of the mechanism inside. This was not due to lack of specific knowledge or problems with salient distractors. The results suggest a link between temporal contiguity and causality in children's understanding. Children also considered causal mechanism, in agreement with previous research, but they may not understand that mechanism is superordinate to perceptual cues for causality.     

Make the first move: How infants learn about self-propelled objects.

In 3 experiments, the author investigated 16- to 20-month-old infants' attention to dynamic and static parts in learning about self-propelled objects. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to simple noncausal events in which a geometric figure with a single moving part started to move without physical contact from an identical geometric figure that possessed a single static part. Infants were then tested with an event in which the parts of the objects were switched. In Experiments 2 and 3, infants were habituated and tested with identical events except that the part possessed by each object during habitation was switched relative to the first experiment. Results of the experiments revealed that 16-month-olds failed to encode the relation between an object's part and its onset of motion, 18-month-olds were unconstrained in the relations involving self-propulsion that they would encode, and 20-month-olds were constrained in the relations they would encode. The results are discussed with regard to the developmental trajectory of learning about motion properties and the mechanism involved in early concept acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of orienting to locations and objects in human infants.

Investigated the preference for orienting to novel locations and novel objects in young infants in 2 experiments, by examining the influence of visual signals on subsequent attentional orienting and eye movements. Exp 1 (n?=?12) demonstrates that 3-mo-olds show inhibition of return (IOR) for 10° target eccentricities, but not for 30° target eccentricities. In Exp 2, 14 3-mo-olds and 14 6-mo-olds oriented to 10° targets that varied in location and object identity. Ss of both ages strongly preferred orienting to novel objects at novel locations. At 3 mo, the preference for novel objects was equal to the preference for novel locations, while at 6 mo a tendency to prefer novel objects over novel locations emerged. Overall, findings support separate development of these 2 forms of novelty preference, and suggest that novel location preferences (IOR) relates closely to the eye movement system. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young infants' generalization of emotional expressions: Effects of familiarity.

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Binocular vision and spatial perception on 4- and 5-month-old infants.

Conducted 4 experiments investigating the relation between the development of binocular vision and infant spatial perception. Exps I and II compared monocular depth perception in 39 4- and 5-mo-old infants. Results show that Ss in both age groups reached more consistently for the nearer of 2 objects under binocular viewing conditions than under monocular viewing conditions. Exps III and IV investigated whether the superiority of binocular depth perception in 89 4-mo-olds is related to the development of sensitivity to binocular disparity. In Exps I–II, under binocular viewing conditions, Ss who were identified as disparity-sensitive reached more consistently for the nearer object than did Ss who were identified as disparity-insensitive. The 2 group's performances did not differ under monocular viewing conditions. Results suggest that, binocularly, the disparity-sensitive Ss perceived the objects' distances more accurately than did the disparity-insensistive Ss. In Exps II–IV when Ss were habituated to an object, then presented with the same object and a novel object that differed only in size, disparity-sensitive Ss showed size constancy by recovering from habituation when viewing the novel object. Disparity-insensitive Ss did not show clear evidence of size constancy. Findings suggest that the development of sensitivity to binocular disparity is accompanied by a substantial increase in the accuracy of infant spatial perception. (64 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining in infancy: Does it reflect active processing?

Two studies explored whether sustained attention during infants' object exploration, or examining, reflects more active processing than do other components of attention. In Exp 1, infants examined complex objects more than simple ones and novel objects more than familiar ones. In addition, 7-mo-olds examined objects more than did 10-mo-olds. Looking that did not involve examining did not vary systematically with either complexity or age. These findings suggest that infants' examining is related to the amount of information to be processed. Exp 2 tested this hypothesis more directly by evaluating how distractible 7- and 10-mo-olds were during examining as compared with nonexamining phases of attention. Infants were less distractible during examining, supporting the assumption that examining involves more active cognitive processing than other aspects of visual attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning and discrimination of audiovisual events in human infants: The hierarchical relation between intersensory temporal synchrony and rhythmic pattern cues.

This study examined 4- to 10-month-old infants' perception of audio-visual (A-V) temporal synchrony cues in the presence or absence of rhythmic pattern cues. Experiment 1 established that infants of all ages could successfully discriminate between two different audiovisual rhythmic events. Experiment 2 showed that only 10-month-old infants detected a desynchronization of the auditory and visual components of a rhythmical event. Experiment 3 showed that 4- to 8-month-old infants could detect A-V desynchronization but only when the audiovisual event was nonrhythmic. These results show that initially in development infants attend to the overall temporal structure of rhythmic audiovisual events but that later in development they become capable of perceiving the embedded intersensory temporal synchrony relations as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' ability to parse continuous actions.

In a series of 3 experiments, the authors examined 6- and 8-month-old infants' capacities to detect target actions in a continuous action sequence. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to 2 different target actions and subsequently were presented with 2 continuous action sequences that either included or did not include the familiar target actions. Infants looked significantly longer at the sequences that were novel. Experiment 2 presented the habituation and test trials in the reverse order. The results showed that infants habituated to the sequence still showed reliable evidence of recognizing the target action during the test trials. Experiment 3 was comparable to Experiment 2, except it tested whether infants could detect a different event segment, namely the transitions between events. The results showed that infants did not discriminate between test trials suggesting that transitions between events are not as easy for infants to recognize. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of stimulus complexity and familiarization time on infant preferences for novel and familiar stimuli.

Measures of visual fixation (VF) and of focused manipulation of an array of familiar and of novel toys were evaluated for 32 8-mo-olds and 32 12-mo-olds for whom both arrays contained 3 toys and 32 12-mo-olds for whom both arrays contained 5 toys. Prior to testing, half of the Ss in each group had been habituated to the familiar array, whereas the other half had been familiarized but interrupted before habituation could be completed. Results show that habituated Ss in each group preferred to look at and manipulate toys in a novel array. In contrast, interrupted Ss preferred toys in a familiar array, but only if the array was complex relative to age (3 toys for 8-mo-olds and 5 toys for 12-mo-olds) and only with the focused manipulation measure. If the stimulus was simple and/or the response measured was VF, interrupted Ss showed no preference for either array. Findings provide evidence of a progression from familiarity preference to novelty preference that is not tied to a particular age but occurs repeatedly as new stimuli are encountered. Age-related changes are present, however, in the effective complexity of the stimuli, the amount of familiarization, and the form of response necessary to elicit the progression. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judging probable cause.

Argues that people use systematic rules for assessing cause, both in science and everyday inference. By explicating the processes that underlie the judgment of causation, the authors review and integrate various theories of causality proposed by psychologists, philosophers, statisticians, and others. Because causal judgment involves inference and uncertainty, the literature on judgment under uncertainty is also considered. It is suggested that the idea of a "causal field" is central for determining causal relevance, differentiating causes from conditions, determining the salience of alternative explanations, and affecting molar versus molecular explanations. Various "cues-to-causality" such as covariation, temporal order, contiguity in time and space, and similarity of cause and effect are discussed, and it is shown how these cues can conflict with probabilistic ideas. A model for combining the cues and the causal field is outlined that explicates methodological issues such as spurious correlation, "causalation," and causal inference in case studies. The discounting of an explanation by specific alternatives is discussed as a special case of the sequential updating of beliefs. Conjunctive explanations in multiple causation are also considered. (120 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detection of information specifying the motion of objects by 3- and 5-month-old infants.

Two studies investigated the ability of 56 3.5- and 5-mo-olds to recognize and discriminate among different motions of rigid objects. In each study, Ss were habituated to 1 of 2 motions made by several different objects. After reaching criterion, they were tested with a novel object making the familiar motion and a novel one. At 5 mo, Ss discriminated (a) the translation of an object from rotation plus translation, (b) translation alone from rotation alone, (c) full rotation on the vertical axis from oscillation on the vertical axis, and (d) rotation to the left and rotation to the right. At 3.5 mo, Ss responded differently only in the 1st case, and it was less clear that they were discriminating on the basis of motion. Three additional studies, with 64 5-mo-olds, suggested that texture on the surface of the object and the projected contour were both important to the discrimination of the different motions. Results are discussed in terms of disruptions in the optic array. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between visual and tactual exploration by 6-month-olds.

Observed the looking and touching responses of 48 6-mo-olds to visually or tactually novel objects to investigate the relationship between Ss' visual and tactual exploration. Ss were familiarized with an object of a given color and temperature and were then presented with an object different only in color or different only in temperature. Ss in the temperature-change condition exhibited both visual and tactual novelty responses, whereas Ss in the color-change condition exhibited neither. Findings indicate that 6-mo-olds are capable of tactual recognition memory, temperature is a salient property of objects for infants, and visual exploration and tactual exploration are not independent perceptual activities but are related in an asymmetrical fashion. Findings also support the notion that, in some circumstances, young infants may be so engrossed with the tactual characteristics of an object that attention to its visual properties is diluted. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of situation model construction in narrative comprehension.

Several factors potentially influence the extent to which readers form a coherent mental representation during story comprehension. The main factors are argument overlap (i.e., connections between text constituents) and situational continuity (i.e., connections between the components of the referential situation model). The authors distinguished 3 dimensions of situational continuity: temporal, spatial, and causal continuity. Results of 2 reading-time studies involving naturalistic stories suggest that readers simultaneously monitor multiple dimensions of the situation model (particularly temporality and causality) under a normal reading instruction. In addition, the construction of a situation model does not critically depend on the presence or absence of argument overlap. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of auditory-visual distance relations by 5-month-old infants.

This study investigated whether, and on what basis, 5-mo-old infants perceive auditory–visual distance relations. A 2-screen visual preference procedure was used in which infants viewed side by side videotaped toy trains (in 4 visual conditions) along with increasing or decreasing amplitude lawnmower engine sounds from a central speaker designed to match one of the videos. Results suggest that 5-mo-olds were sensitive to auditory–visual distance relations and that changing size was an important visual depth cue. Infants did not show evidence of matching in other conditions in which the soundtracks were paired with videos depicting shifts in the train's luminance or showing the train moving vertically with no change in size. The infants' matching performance suggested that 5-mo-olds respond to invariant auditory–visual relations specifying meaningful spatial properties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)