The cradle of causal reasoning: newborns' preference for physical causality

Spontaneous Encoding of Event Roles in Hominids

When observing social interactions, humans rapidly and spontaneously encode events in terms of agents, patients and causal relations. This propensity can be made visible empirically with the switch cost paradigm, a reaction time experiment and well-established tool of cognitive psychology. We adapted the paradigm for non-human primates to test whether non-linguistic animals encoded event roles in the same way. Both human and non-human participants were requested to attend to different social interactions between two artificially coloured (blue or green) actors and to target the actor masked by a specified colour (e.g., blue), regardless of her role. We found that when we switched the targeted colour mask from agents to patients (or vice versa) the processing time significantly increased in both hominid species (i.e., human and chimpanzee), suggesting that event roles were spontaneously encoded and subsequently interfered with our simplistic colour search task. We concluded that the propensity to encode social events in terms of agents and patients was a common feature of hominid cognition, as demonstrated in several human and one chimpanzee participant, pointing towards an evolutionarily old and phylogenetically shared cognitive mechanism central to language processing.

A comparative study of causal perception in Guinea baboons (Papio papio) and human adults

In humans, simple 2D visual displays of launching events ("Michottean launches") can evoke the impression of causality. Direct launching events are regarded as causal, but similar events with a temporal and/or spatial gap between the movements of the two objects, as non-causal. This ability to distinguish between causal and non-causal events is perceptual in nature and develops early and preverbally in infancy. In the present study we investigated the evolutionary origins of this phenomenon and tested whether Guinea baboons (Papio papio) perceive causality in launching events. We used a novel paradigm which was designed to distinguish between the use of causality and the use of spatiotemporal properties. Our results indicate that Guinea baboons successfully discriminate between different Michottean events, but we did not find a learning advantage for a categorisation based on causality as was the case for human adults. Our results imply that, contrary to humans, baboons focused on the spatial and temporal gaps to achieve accurate categorisation, but not on causality per se. Understanding how animals perceive causality is important to figure out whether non-human animals comprehend events similarly to humans. Our study hints at a different manner of processing physical causality for Guinea baboons and human adults.

Children's representation of coincidence

People relish thinking about coincidences-we puzzle over their meanings and delight in conveying our experiences of them to others. But whereas some research has begun to explore how coincidences are represented by adults, little is known about the early development of these representations. Here we explored factors influencing coincidence representations in both adults and children. Across two experiments, participants read stories describing co-occurring events and then judged whether these constituted coincidences. In Experiment 1 we found that adults' coincidence judgments were highly sensitive to the presence or absence of plausible explanations: as expected, adults were more likely to judge co-occurrences as a coincidence when no explanation was available. Importantly, their coincidence judgments were also modulated by the number of events that co-occurred. Adults tended to reject scenarios involving too many co-occurring events as coincidences regardless of whether an explanation was present, suggesting that observing suspiciously many co-occurrences triggered them to infer their own underlying explanation (and thus blocking the events' interpretation as a coincidence). In Experiment 2 we found that 4- to 10-year-old children also represent coincidences, and identify them via the absence of plausible explanations. Older children, like adults, rejected suspiciously large numbers of co-occurring events as coincidental, whereas younger children did not exhibit this sensitivity. Overall, these results suggest that representation of coincidence is available from early in life, but undergoes developmental change during the early school-age years.

Infants' representations of michottean triggering events

The classic Michottean 'launching' event is consistent with a real-world Newtonian elastic collision. Previous research has shown that adult humans distinguish launching events that obey some of the physical constraints on Newtonian elastic collisions from events that do not do so early in visual processing, and that infants do so early in development (< 9 months of age). These include that in a launching event, the speed of the agent can be 3 times faster (or more) than that of the patient but the speed of the patient cannot be detectably greater than the speed of the agent. Experiment 1 shows that 7-8-month-old infants also distinguish canonical launching events from events in which the motion of the patient is rotated 90° from the trajectory of the motion of the agent (another outcome ruled out by the physics of elastic collisions). Violations of both the relative speed and the angle constraints create Michottean 'triggering' events, in which adults describe the motion of the patient as autonomous but not spontaneous, i.e., still initiated by contact with the causal agent. Experiments 2 and 3 begin to explore whether infants of this age construe Michottean triggering events as causal. We find that infants of this age are not sensitive to a reversal of the agent and patient in triggering events, thus failing to exhibit one of the signatures of representing an event as causal. We argue that there are likely several independent events schemas with causal content represented by young infants, and the literature on the origins of causal cognition in infancy would benefit from systematic investigations of event schemas other than launching events.

Causal learning by infants and young children: From computational theories to language practices

Causal reasoning-the ability to reason about causal relations between events-is fundamental to understanding how the world works. This paper reviews two prominent theories on early causal learning and offers possibilities for theory bridging. Both theories grow out of computational modeling and have significant areas of overlap while differing in several respects. Explanation-Based Learning (EBL) focuses on young infants' learning about causal concepts of physical objects and events, whereas Bayesian models have been used to describe causal reasoning beyond infancy across various concept domains. Connecting the two models offers a more integrated approach to clarifying the developmental processes in causal reasoning from early infancy through later childhood. We further suggest that everyday language practices offer a promising space for theory bridging. We provide a review of selective work on caregiver-child conversations, in particular, on the use of scaffolding language including causal talk and pedagogical questions. Linking the research on language practices to the two cognitive theories, we point out directions for further research to integrate EBL and Bayesian models and clarify how causal learning unfolds in real life. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development.

The illusion of the mind-body divide is attenuated in males

A large literature suggests that people are intuitive Dualists-they tend to perceive the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. Here, we ask whether Dualism emanates from within the human psyche, guided, in part, by theory of mind (ToM). Past research has shown that males are poorer mind-readers than females. If ToM begets Dualism, then males should exhibit weaker Dualism, and instead, lean towards Physicalism (i.e., they should view bodies and minds alike). Experiments 1-2 show that males indeed perceive the psyche as more embodied-as more likely to emerge in a replica of one's body, and less likely to persist in its absence (after life). Experiment 3 further shows that males are less inclined towards Empiricism-a putative byproduct of Dualism. A final analysis confirms that males' ToM scores are lower, and ToM scores further correlate with embodiment intuitions (in Experiments 1-2). These observations (from Western participants) cannot establish universality, but the association of Dualism with ToM suggests its roots are psychological. Thus, the illusory mind-body divide may arise from the very workings of the human mind.

Relationships Organize Information in Mind and Nature: Empirical Findings of Action–Reaction Relationships (R) in Cognitive and Material Complexity

Diverse phenomena such as feedback, interconnectedness, causality, network dynamics, and complexity are all born from Relationships. They are fundamentally important, as they are transdisciplinary and synonymous with connections, links, edges, and interconnections. The foundation of systems thinking and systems themselves consists of four universals, one of which is action–reaction Relationships. They are also foundational to the consilience of knowledge. This publication gives a formal description of and predictions of action–reaction Relationships (R) or “R-rule”. There are seven original empirical studies presented in this paper. For these seven studies, experiments for the subjects were created on software (unless otherwise noted). The experiments had the subjects complete a task and/or answer a question. The samples are generalizable to a normal distribution of the US population and they vary for each study (ranging from N = 407 to N = 34,398). With high statistical significance the studies support the predictions made by DSRP Theory regarding action–reaction Relationships including its universality as an observable phenomenon in both nature (ontological complexity) and mind (cognitive complexity); mutual dependencies on other universals (i.e., Distinctions, Systems, and Perspectives); role in structural predictions; internal structures and dynamics; efficacy as a metacognitive skill. In conclusion, these data suggest the observable and empirical existence, parallelism (between cognitive and ontological complexity), universality, and efficacy of action–reaction Relationships (R).

Infants' preferences for approachers over repulsers shift between 4 and 8 months of age

Despite its adaptive value for social life, the emergence and the development of the ability to detect agents that cause aversive interactions and distinguish them from potentially affiliative agents (approachers) has not been investigated. We presented infants with a simple interaction involving two agents: one of them (the "repulser") moved toward and pushed the other (the "approacher") which reacted by simply moving toward the repulser without contacting it. We found that 8-month-olds (N = 28) looked longer at the approacher than at the repulser (Experiment 1), whereas 4-month-olds (N = 30) exhibited no preference (Experiment 2). To control for low-level cues (such as the preference for the agent that moved after the contact), two new groups of 4- and 8-month-old infants were presented with a series of interactions in which the agents inverted their social roles. Older infants (N = 30) manifested no preference for either agent (Experiment 3), while younger infants (N = 30) looked longer at the first agent to move (Experiment 4). Our results indicated that 8-month-olds' preferences for the approacher over the repulser depended on social information and were finely tuned to agents that display prosocial rather than antisocial behavior. We discuss these findings in light of the development and adaptive value of the ability to negatively evaluate repulsers, to avoid choosing them as partners.

The “Fish Tank” Experiments: Metacognitive Awareness of Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives (DSRP) Significantly Increases Cognitive Complexity

In the field of systems thinking, there are far too many opinioned frameworks and far too few empirical studies. This could be described as a “gap” in the research but it is more like a dearth in the research. More theory and empirical validation of theory are needed if the field and the phenomenon of systems thinking holds promise and not just popularity. This validation comes in the form of both basic (existential) and applied (efficacy) research studies. This article presents efficacy data for a set of empirical studies of DSRP Theory. According to Cabrera, Cabrera, and Midgley, DSRP Theory has equal or more empirical evidence supporting it than any existing systems theories (including frameworks, which are not theories). Four separate studies show highly statistically relevant findings for the effect of a short (less than one minute) treatment of D, S, R, and P. Subjects’ cognitive complexity and the systemic nature of their thinking increased in all four studies. These findings indicate that even a short treatment in DSRP is effective in increasing systems thinking skills. Based on these results, a longer, more in-depth treatment—such as a one hour or semester long training, such is the norm—would therefore likely garner transformative results and efficacy.

DSRP Theory: A Primer

DSRP Theory is now over 25 years old with more empirical evidence supporting it than any other systems thinking framework. Yet, it is often misunderstood and described in ways that are inaccurate. DSRP Theory describes four patterns and their underlying elements—identity (i) and other (o) for Distinctions (D), part (p) and whole (w) for Systems (S), action (a) and reaction (r) for Relationships (R), and point (ρ) and view (v) for Perspectives (P)—that are universal in both cognitive complexity (mind) and material complexity (nature). DSRP Theory provides a basis for systems thinking or cognitive complexity as well as material complexity (systems science). This paper, as a relatively short primer on the theory, provides clarity to those wanting to understand DSRP and its implications.

Can the Mind Command the Body?

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.g., thinking about a cup) are indeed perceived as ethereal-as less detectible in the body (brain), and more likely to exist in the afterlife relative to matched percepts (e.g., seeing a cup). Experiments 2-5 show that thoughts are considered less likely to cause behavior than percepts (e.g., thinking of a cup vs. seeing one). Furthermore, mind-body causation is more remarkable when its bodily consequences are salient (e.g., moving an arm vs. brain activation). Finally, epistemic causes are remarkable only when they are ascribed to mental- (e.g., "thinking") but not to physical states ("activation"). Together, these results suggest that mind-body interactions elicit a latent dualist dissonance.

The seductive allure of the brain: Dualism and lay perceptions of neuroscience

Laypeople prefer brain explanations of behavior (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008). We suggest that this preference arises from 'intuitive Dualism'. For the Dualist, mentalistic causation elicits a mind-body dissonance, as it suggests that the immaterial mind affects the body. Brain causation attributes behavior to the body, so it alleviates the dissonance, hence, preferred. We thus predict stronger brain preference for epistemic traits - those perceived as least material, even when no explanation is required. To test this prediction, participants diagnosed clinical conditions using matched brain- and behavioral tests. Experiments 1-2 showed that epistemic traits elicited stronger preference for brain tests. Experiment 3 confirmed that epistemic traits are perceived as immaterial. Experiment 4 showed that, the less material the trait seems, the stronger the surprise (possibly, dissonance) and brain preference. Results offer new insights into public perception of science, the role of intuitive Dualism, and the seductive allure of neuroscience.

Children's Perception of Animacy: Social Attributions to Moving Figures

Adults describe abstract shapes moving in a goal-directed manner using animate terms. This study tested which variables affect school-aged children's descriptions of moving geometrical shapes. Children aged 5 to 9 years were shown displays of interacting geometrical shapes and were asked to describe them. Across participants, instructions, number of moving figures, whether a figure caught another, and complexity of the scene were manipulated. Nine-year-olds used significantly more animate phrases than 5-year-olds. Furthermore, we found an Age by Condition interaction. Five-year-olds made significantly more animate statements in the animate condition, while 7-year-olds and 9-year-olds were less affected by instructions. Scene complexity increased children's use of animate phrases. Number of agents present on the screen and whether a catch occurred did not impact children's animate attributions. Our results support the hypothesis that children, like adults, are attuned to animacy cues and describe chasing agents in animate terms.

Newborns' sensitivity to speed changes as a building block for animacy perception

The human visual system can discriminate between animate beings vs. inanimate objects on the basis of some kinematic cues, such as starting from rest and speed changes by self-propulsion. The ontogenetic origin of such capability is still under debate. Here we investigate for the first time whether newborns manifest an attentional bias toward objects that abruptly change their speed along a trajectory as contrasted with objects that move at a constant speed. To this end, we systematically manipulated the motion speed of two objects. An object that moves with a constant speed was contrasted with an object that suddenly increases (Experiment 1) or with one that suddenly decreases its speed (Experiment 2). When presented with a single speed change, newborns did not show any visual preference. However, newborns preferred an object that abruptly increases and then decreases its speed (Experiment 3), but they did not show any visual preference for the reverse sequence pattern (Experiment 4). Overall, results are discussed in line with the hypothesis of the existence of attentional biases in newborns that trigger their attention towards some visual cues of motion that characterized animate perception in adults.

Why Not Just Features? Reconsidering Infants' Behavior in Individuation Tasks

It counts as empirically proven that infants can individuate objects. Object individuation is assumed to be fundamental in the development of infants' ontology within the object-first account. It crucially relies on an object-file (OF) system, representing both spatiotemporal ("where") and categorical ("what") information about objects as solid, cohesive bodies moving continuously in space and time. However, infants' performance in tasks requiring them to use featural information to detect individuation violations appears to be at odds with the object-first account. In such cases, infants do not appear to be able to develop correct expectations about the numerosity of objects. Recently, proponents of the object-first account proposed that these individuation failures result from integration errors between the OF system and an additional physical reasoning system. We are going to argue that the predictions of a feature-based physical-reasoning (PR) system are sufficient for explaining infants' behavior. The striking predictive power of the PR system calls into question the relevance of the OF system and, thereby, challenges the assumption that infants can individuate objects early on.

Speed Overestimation of the Moving Away Object in the Intentional Reaction Causal Effect

We describe a new illusory speed effect arising in visual events developed by Michotte (1946/1963) in studies of causal perception and, more specifically, within the so-called intentional reaction effect: When an Object B is seen intentionally escaping from another Object A, its perceived speed is overestimated. In Experiment 1, we used two-alternative forced choice comparisons to estimate perceived speed scale values for a small square moving either alone or in different contexts known to elicit different impressions of animacy (Parovel et al., 2018). The results showed that B's speed was overestimated only in the condition in which it moved away from another approaching square moving in a nonrigid way, like a caterpillar. In Experiment 2, we psychophysically measured the magnitude of speed overestimation in that condition and tested whether it could be affected by further animacy cues related to the escaping object (the actual velocity of the square) and to the approaching square (its type of motion: caterpillar or linear). Results confirmed that B's speed was overestimated up to 10% and that the degree of overestimation was affected by both experimental factors, being greater at higher speeds and when the chasing object moved in an animate fashion. This speed bias might be related to a higher sensitivity of the visual processes to threat-related events such as fighting and chasing, leading to evolutionary adaptive behaviours such as speedy flight from predators, but also empathy and emotion understanding.

Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception

We can perceive not only low-level features of events such as color and motion, but also seemingly higher-level properties such as causality. A prototypical example of causal perception is the 'launching effect': one object (A) moves toward a stationary second object (B) until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving in the same direction. Beyond these motions themselves - and regardless of any higher-level beliefs - this display induces a vivid visual impression of causality, wherein A is seen to cause B's motion. Do such percepts reflect a unitary category of visual processing, or might there be multiple distinct forms of causal perception? While launching is often simply equated with causal perception, researchers have sometimes described other phenomena such as 'triggering' (in which B moves faster than A) and 'entraining' (in which A continues to move alongside B). We used psychophysical methods to determine whether these labels really carve visual processing at its joints, and how putatively different forms of causal perception relate to each other. Previous research demonstrated retinotopically specific adaptation to causality: exposure to causal launching makes subsequent ambiguous events in that same location more likely to be seen as non-causal 'passing'. Here, after replicating this effect, we show that exposure to triggering also yields retinotopically specific adaptation for subsequent ambiguous launching displays, but that exposure to entraining does not. Collectively, these results reveal that visual processing distinguishes some (but not all) types of causal interactions.

No evidence of spontaneous preference for slowly moving objects in visually naïve chicks

It has been recently reported that young chicks that have received equal exposure to slowly- and fast-rotating objects showed a preference for slowly-rotating objects. This would suggest that visual experience with slowly moving objects is necessary for object recognition in newborns. I attempted to duplicate this finding in newborn chicks using a simple rotating blue cube. No significant preference was found. Using objects similar to the ones used in the previous study (digital embryos), I observed a strong and robust preference for the fast- (not for the slow-) rotating object. To clarify whether the discrepancies with the previous study could be due to the stimuli frame-frequency used (the chicks' visual system is characterized by high temporal resolution), I repeated the experiments by presenting the stimuli with a lower-frame frequency (from 120 fps to 24 fps). However, similar preferences for the fast-rotating objects were found, this time also for the rotating blue cube. These results suggest a preference for fast-rotating objects that is modulated by the shape and, in part, by the frame-frequency. It remains to be established whether the discrepancies between this study and the previous study can be explained by differences related to strains or artefacts due to the use of monitors with a low-refresh rate.

A transient time window for early predispositions in newborn chicks

Neonates of different species are born with a set of predispositions that influence their early orienting responses toward the first stimuli encountered in their life. Human neonates and domestic chicks exhibit several similarities in the predisposition for attending to objects that move with speed changes, face-like stimuli and biological motion. Although early predispositions are connected to physiological development, little is known on the temporal course of early predispositions (whether they are stable or change in time) and on the associated genetic variability. To address these issues, we tested the preference for objects that change in speed vs. linear motion in three chicken breeds (Padovana, Polverara and Robusta maculata) within one day after hatching and three days after hatching. We found that the predisposition to preferentially attend to changes in speed is shared by different breeds on the first day of life and that it disappears by day three. These results indicate the existence of a short and transient time window of early predispositions that does not depend on visual experience.

Two-day-old newborns learn to discriminate accelerated-decelerated biological kinematics from constant velocity motion

Already in uterus the hand moves with the typical accelerated-decelerated kinematics of goal-directed actions and, from the twenty-second week of pregnancy, the unborn shows the ability to modulate the velocity of the movement depending on the nature of the target. According to the direct matching hypothesis, this motor knowledge may be sufficient to attune neonates' motion perception-like adults'-to biological kinematics. Using dots configuration motions which varied with respect to the kinematics of goal-directed actions, we observed that two-day-old human newborns did not show any spontaneous preference for either biological accelerated-decelerated motion or non-biological constant velocity motion when these were simultaneously presented in a standard preferential looking paradigm. In contrast, newborns preferred the biological kinematics after the repeated visual presentation of the different motions in a standard infant-control visual habituation paradigm. We propose that present results indicate that the relationship between perception and action does not require only action development but also the accumulation of sufficient perceptual experience. They also suggest a fast plasticity of the sensorimotor system in linking an already acquired motor knowledge with a newly experienced congruent visual stimulation.

The Cultural Fabric of Human Causal Cognition

Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cultural diversity suggest that causal cognition in humans is not only colored by their specific cultural background but also shaped more fundamentally by the very fact that humans are a cultural species.

Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants

We investigated the origins and interrelations of causal knowledge and knowledge of agency in 3-month-old infants, who cannot yet effect changes in the world by reaching for, grasping, and picking up objects. Across 5 experiments, n = 152 prereaching infants viewed object-directed reaches that varied in efficiency (following the shortest physically possible path vs. a longer path), goal (lifting an object vs. causing a change in its state), and causal structure (action on contact vs. action at a distance and after a delay). Prereaching infants showed no strong looking preference between a person's efficient and inefficient reaches when the person grasped and displaced an object. When the person reached for and caused a change in the state of the object on contact, however, infants looked longer when this action was inefficient than when it was efficient. Three-month-old infants also showed a key signature of adults' and older infants' causal inferences: This looking preference was abolished if a short spatial and temporal gap separated the action from its effect. The basic intuition that people are causal agents, who navigate around physical constraints to change the state of the world, may be one important foundation for infants' ability to plan their own actions and learn from the acts of others.

Catastrophic individuation failures in infancy: A new model and predictions

Comparison of infant findings from the physical-reasoning and object-individuation literatures reveals a contradictory picture. On the one hand, physical-reasoning results indicate that young infants can use featural information to guide their actions on objects and to detect interaction violations (when objects interact in ways that are not physically possible) as well as change violations (when objects spontaneously undergo featural changes that are not physically possible). On the other hand, object-individuation results indicate that young infants typically cannot use featural information to detect individuation violations (when the number of objects revealed at the end of an event is less than the number of objects introduced during the event). In this article, we attempt to reconcile these two bodies of research. In a new model of early individuation, we propose that two systems help infants individuate objects in physical events: the object-file and physical-reasoning systems. Under certain conditions, disagreements between the systems result in catastrophic individuation failures, leading infants to hold no expectation at all about how many objects are present. We report experiments with 9- to 11-month-old infants (N = 216) that tested predictions from the model. After two objects emerged in alternation from behind a screen, infants detected no violation when the screen was lowered to reveal no object. Similarly, after two objects emerged in alternation from inside a box, which was then shaken, infants detected no violation when the box remained silent, as though empty. We end with new directions, suggested by our model, for research on early object representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychosis as an Evolutionary Adaptive Mechanism to Changing Environments

Background: From an evolutionary perspective it is remarkable that psychotic disorders, mostly occurring during fertile age and decreasing fecundity, maintain in the human population. Aim: To argue the hypothesis that psychotic symptoms may not be viewed as an illness but as an adaptation phenomenon, which can become out of control due to different underlying brain vulnerabilities and external stressors, leading to social exclusion. Methods: A literature study and analysis. Results: Until now, biomedical research has not unravelld the definitive etiology of psychotic disorders. Findings are inconsistent and show non-specific brain anomalies and genetic variation with small effect sizes. However, compelling evidence was found for a relation between psychosis and stressful environmental factors, particularly those influencing social interaction. Psychotic symptoms may be explained as a natural defense mechanism or protective response to stressful environments. This is in line with the fact that psychotic symptoms most often develop during adolescence. In this phase of life, leaving the familiar, and safe home environment and building new social networks is one of the main tasks. This could cause symptoms of "hyperconsciousness" and calls on the capacity for social adaptation. Conclusions: Psychotic symptoms may be considered as an evolutionary maintained phenomenon.Research investigating psychotic disorders may benefit from a focus on underlying general brain vulnerabilities or prevention of social exclusion, instead of psychotic symptoms.

Categories and Constraints in Causal Perception

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).

Newborn chicks show inherited variability in early social predispositions for hen-like stimuli

Predispositions of newborn vertebrates to preferentially attend to living beings and learn about them are pervasive. Their disturbance (e.g. in neonates at risk for autism), may compromise the proper development of a social brain. The genetic bases of such predispositions are unknown. We use the well-known visual preferences of newly-hatched chicks (Gallus gallus) for the head/neck region of the hen to investigate the presence of segregating variation in the predispositions to approach a stuffed hen vs. a scrambled version of it. We compared the spontaneous preferences of three breeds maintained genetically isolated for at least eighteen years while identically raised. Visually-naïve chicks of all breeds (Padovana, Polverara and Robusta maculata) showed the same initial preference for the predisposed stimulus, suggesting that the direction of the initial preference might be genetically fixed. A few minutes later though, striking differences emerged between breeds, which could indicate different strategies of dealing with affiliative objects: while the Polverara breed maintained a constant preference across the entire test, the Padovana and Robusta breeds progressively explored the alternative stimulus more. We hence documented the presence of inherited genetic variability in the expression of early social predispositions in interaction with environmental stimuli.

Spontaneous preference for visual cues of animacy in naïve domestic chicks: The case of speed changes

Animacy perception arises in human adults from motion cues implying an internal energy source to the moving object. The internal energy of the object is often represented by a change in speed. The same features cause preferential attention in infants. We investigated whether speed changes affecting adults' animacy ratings elicit spontaneous social preferences in visually-naïve chicks. Human observers evaluated the similarity between the movement of a red blob stimulus and that of a living creature. The stimulus entered the screen and moved along the azimuth; halfway through its trajectory it could either continue to move at a constant speed or linearly increase in speed. The average speed, the distance covered and the overall motion duration were kept constant. Animacy ratings of humans were higher for accelerating stimuli (Exp. 1). Naïve chicks were then tested for their spontaneous preference for approaching the stimulus moving at a constant speed and trajectory or an identical stimulus, which suddenly accelerated and then decelerated again to the original speed. Chicks showed a significant preference for the 'speed-change stimulus' (Exp. 2). Two additional controls (Exp. 3 and 4) showed that matching the variability of the control 'speed-constant' stimulus to that of the 'speed-change stimulus' did not alter chicks' preference for the latter. Chicks' preference was suppressed by adding two occluders on both displays, positioned along the stimulus trajectory in such a way to occlude the moment of the speed change (Exp. 5). This confirms that, for chicks to show a preference, the moments of speed change need to be visible. Finally, chicks' preference extended to stimuli displaying a direction change, another motion cue eliciting animacy perception in human observers, if the speed- and direction-profile were consistent with each other and resembled what expected for biological entities that invert their motion direction (Exp. 6). Overall, this is the first demonstration of social predispositions for speed changes in any naïve model or non-human animal, indicating the presence of an attentional filter tuned toward one of the general properties of animate creatures. The similarity with human data suggests a phylogenetically old mechanism shared between vertebrates. Finally, the paradigm developed here provides ground for future investigations of the neural basis of these phenomena.

I spy with my little eye - the detection of intentional contingency in early psychosis

INTRODUCTION

Paranoid delusions have been associated with a tendency to over-attribute intentionality and contingency to others' actions and incidental events in individuals with chronic psychosis. However, this hyper-associative perception bias has not been investigated in the early illness stages of psychosis, during which it may play a particularly crucial role in the formation of symptoms.

METHOD

We used an experimental paradigm with 20 short film clips of simple animate and inanimate shapes that either moved in a contingent or non-contingent manner to investigate the perception of contingency in 38 adolescents with early psychosis and 93 healthy control adolescents. Participants rated the contingency between the shapes' movements on a scale from 0 to 10. The data were analysed with multilevel regression analyses to account for repeated measures within subjects.

RESULTS

There were no significant differences between patients and controls; both perceived the contingency of the shapes' movements similarly across all conditions and patients' contingency perception was unrelated to their levels of paranoid delusions.

CONCLUSION

Contingency perception was unimpaired in patients with early psychosis, suggesting that it might still be intact in the early illness stages. Future studies should set out to determine whether the early illness stages could offer a window for interventions that counteract the development of hyper-associative perceptions of contingency.

Origins of Knowledge: Insights from Precocial Species

Behavioral responses are influenced by knowledge acquired during the lifetime of an individual and by predispositions transmitted across generations. Establishing the origin of knowledge and the role of the unlearned component is a challenging task, given that both learned and unlearned knowledge can orient perception, learning, and the encoding of environmental features since the first stages of life. Ethical and practical issues constrain the investigation of unlearned knowledge in altricial species, including human beings. On the contrary, precocial animals can be tested on a wide range of tasks and capabilities immediately after birth and in controlled rearing conditions. Insects and precocial avian species are very convenient models to dissect the knowledge systems that enable young individuals to cope with their environment in the absence of specific previous experience. We present the state of the art of research on the origins of knowledge that comes from different models and disciplines. Insects have been mainly used to investigate unlearned sensory preferences and prepared learning mechanisms. The relative simplicity of the neural system and fast life cycle of insects make them ideal models to investigate the neural circuitry and evolutionary dynamics of unlearned traits. Among avian species, chicks of the domestic fowl have been the focus of many studies, and showed to possess unlearned knowledge in the sensory, physical, spatial, numerical and social domains. Solid evidence shows the existence of unlearned knowledge in different domains in several species, from sensory and social preferences to the left-right representation of the mental number line. We show how non-mammalian models of cognition, and in particular precocial species, can shed light into the adaptive value and evolutionary history of unlearned knowledge.

Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information

Young children, in general, appear to have a strong drive to explore the environment in ways that reveal its underlying causal structure. But are they really attuned specifically to casual information in this quest for understanding, or do they show equal interest in other types of non-obvious information about the world? To answer this question, we introduced 20 three-year-old children to two puppets who were anxious to tell the child about a set of novel artifacts and animals. One puppet consistently described causal properties of the items while the other puppet consistently described carefully matched non-causal properties of the same items. After a familiarization period in which children learned which type of information to expect from each informant, children were given the opportunity to choose which they wanted to hear describe each of eight pictured test items. On average, children chose to hear from the informant that provided causal descriptions on 72% of the trials. This preference for causal information has important implications for explaining the role of conceptual information in supporting early learning and may suggest means for maximizing interest and motivation in young children.

Preschoolers learn to switch with causally related feedback

Training cognitive flexibility in preschoolers is of great interest but is not easy to achieve. In three experiments, we studied the effects of feedback on preschoolers' switch behavior with a computerized version of the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task. The task was designed such that feedback was connected to the stimulus and causally related to children's behavior. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that children receiving feedback on their post-switch behavior performed better than children administered a standard (no feedback) DCCS task. This effect transferred to a subsequent standard DCCS task after 5 min and after 1 week. Experiment 3 showed that children switched to the new post-switch sorting rules and not to rules that oppose the pre-switch sorting rules. These results highlight preschoolers' sensitivity to the design of feedback in learning an abstract rule.

Current Understanding of What Infants See

The current understanding of what infants see varies greatly among healthcare and education specialists. Even among ophthalmologists and pediatric neurologists in charge of clinical examinations of infants, opinions vary on what infants perceive, recognize, and use for communication and learning. It is, therefore, of interest to review publications from several specialties to learn whether new information is available on the development of visual functions and use of vision. Ten percent of total publications on this subject are reviewed here based on the usefulness of their content for improving early diagnosis and intervention of vision disorders in infants.