Infant perception of causal motion produced by humans and inanimate objects

• Published in: Infant behavior & development Vol. 64; p. 101615
• Main Authors: Peng, Yujia, Lu, Hongjing, Johnson, Scott P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.08.2021
• Subjects: Action understanding; Biological motion; Gross motor function; Motion consistency; Physical causality; Sex difference; Gross motor function; Biological motion; Action understanding; Sex difference; Physical causality; Motion consistency
• ISSN: 0163-6383; 1879-0453
• DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101615

•Female infants 9- to 18-months-old looked longer at a normal walking action than at a moonwalk that violates causal expectations.•Infants 9- to 18-months-old did not discriminate between normal and impossible movements beyond their gross motor functions.•For physical objects, infants did not discriminate between movements that conform to versus violate causal expectations of motion.•Female infants showed longer looking time to biological motion than did male infants. Both the movements of people and inanimate objects are intimately bound up with physical causality. Furthermore, in contrast to object movements, causal relationships between limb movements controlled by humans and their body displacements uniquely reflect agency and goal-directed actions in support of social causality. To investigate the development of sensitivity to causal movements, we examined the looking behavior of infants between 9 and 18 months of age when viewing movements of humans and objects. We also investigated whether individual differences in gender and gross motor functions may impact the development of the visual preferences for causal movements. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with walking stimuli showing either normal body translation or a “moonwalk” that reversed the horizontal motion of body translations. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with unperformable actions beyond infants’ gross motor functions (i.e., long jump) either with or without ecologically valid body displacement. In Experiment 3, infants were presented with rolling movements of inanimate objects that either complied with or violated physical causality. We found that female infants showed longer looking times to normal walking stimuli than to moonwalk stimuli, but did not differ in their looking time to movements of inanimate objects and unperformable actions. In contrast, male infants did not show sensitivity to causal movement for either category. Additionally, female infants looked longer at social stimuli of human actions than male infants. Under the tested circumstances, our findings indicate that female infants have developed a sensitivity to causal consistency between limb movements and body translations of biological motion, only for actions with previous visual and motor exposures, and demonstrate a preference toward social information.