Secret Agents: Inferences About Hidden Causes by 10- and 12-Month-Old Infants
Abstract
Considerable evidence indicates that preverbal infants expect that only physical contact can cause an inanimate object to move. However, very few studies have investigated infants' expectations about the source of causal power. In three experiments, we found that (a) 10- and 12-month-old infants expect a human hand, and not an inanimate object, to be the primary cause of an inanimate object's motion; (b) infants' expectations can lead them to infer a hidden causal agent without any direct perceptual evidence; and (c) infants do not infer a hidden causal agent if the moving object was previously shown to be capable of self-generated motion.
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The human mind is hard-wired to ascribe animacy and mental states to various behaviors, creating agents where there are none.
“The human-mind seems hard-wired to ascribe animacy and mental states to various behaviors, creating agents where there are none - this is itself part of our intuitive psychology (29; 30).”
From Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Tasks (2023) · cites this paper as [30]
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“By ‘‘causal agent,’’ we mean the entity that is the purveyor of causal force, the source of motion or change, in an interaction (Leslie, 1994).”
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- Authors
- Saxe, R., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Carey, S.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Saxe, R.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2005-12
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 995-1001
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2101003077
- Cited by
- 210
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 8.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- preverbal infants, physical contact, causal inference
- MeSH terms
- Psychology, Child, Female, Humans, Infant, Male, Motion Perception, Movement, Infant Behavior
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