Who is Doing What to Whom? Young Infants' Developing Sense of Social Causality in Animated Displays

Abstract

In two different experiments a visual habituation/dishabituation procedure was used to test groups of 3–10-month-old infants for their ability to discriminate the role reversal of two abstract figures (discs of different colors) chasing each other on a computer screen. Results of the first experiment point to a reliable age effect. Only 8–10-month-old infants tended to dishabituate to a role reversal between chaser and chasee. A second experiment shows that in dishabituating to the role reversal, 8–10-month-olds do base this discrimination on relational information between the two discs and not merely on the contrast between their respective vitality or discrete dynamic. By the age of 8–10 months, infants demonstrate sensitivity to information specifying what one disc does to the other, at a distance. These findings point to important changes in perceptual-cognitive development and are discussed in the context of a well described key transition in social-cognitive development occurring at around 9 months of age.