Categories and Constraints in Causal Perception

Jonathan F. Kominsky, Brent Strickland, Annie E. Wertz, Claudia Elsner, Karen Wynn, Frank C. Keil

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

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).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1649-1662
Number of pages14
JournalPsychological Science
Volume28
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Nov 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • causality
  • infant development
  • naive physics
  • open data
  • open materials
  • perception

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