The developmental origins of the animacy concept

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Many developmental studies have shown that infants differentiate between global categories (e.g. animals, vehicles) within the first year of life (e.g. Behl-Chadha, 1996; Mandler & McDonough, 1993; 1998; Pauen, 2002; Quinn & Johnson, 2000). Being interested in what kind of information infants may use for developing such broad categories, a large body of research explores the role of static information. Among those static attributes considered relevant for identifying animates in terms of their appearance are facial features, leg-like appendages, body configuration and surface information. However, although it has been proposed that infants' concepts also include dynamic information (Rakison & Poulin-Dubois, 2001; Mandler, 2004), little research has been devoted to this issue. In the present research program, my collaborators and I study the development of the most fundamental concepts, those used to categorize the kinds of things that exist in the world: people, animals, furniture, vehicles, etc. We use different methods to test infants' knowledge about the kind of qualities associated with different categories of objects (e.g., type of motion, sensations, etc). For example, in some studies we code infants' visual fixation time on computer-generated events that are anomalous (e.g. bus jumping over an obstacle) and compare them when the infants are shown normal events (e.g., horse jumps over same obstacle). In other studies, we prime infants with computer-generated events (e.g., man walking and test categorization skills and general cognitive abilities. Knowing how much of conceptual knowledge infants possess will help us to know whether infants enter the world prepared by evolution to form certain kinds of concepts and ultimately to design procedures to diagnose infants at risk for autism spectrum disorders.