THE DEVELOPMENT OF CORE KNOWLEDGE IN THE SOCIAL DOMAIN

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Developmental psychologists have described “Core Knowledge” as those specific domains of knowledge that infants and children develop easily, without explicit tutoring. Particular areas of knowledge are thought to be important to survival in the environment in which we evolved, and include an early competence in areas such as physics, space, biology, and arithmetic. The research proposed here focuses on the question of whether there is evidence that one domain of core knowledge is the social domain. Social cognition was important in the environment in which we evolved. Those who could identify and remember individuals, track alliances, remember favors and debts, and use other’s goals and desires and a tool of manipulation had a better chance at survival. Conversely, there was an extreme danger to those who could not respect the hierarchy and avoid offence: ostracism would lead to death. As a result, humans have evolved specific, well-designed social cognitive tools. Social perceptual information is foundational to all social interactions, and the proposed research is designed as a test of whether infants show early competence with respect to the perception of social information, and whether they have an attentional preference for animate objects. The overarching goals of this research program are 1) to understand the nature of the human psychological processes that allow typical people to perceive animate motion to perceive chase scenes, and 2) to understand how these social perceptual processes differ among those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Specific experiments test, for example: Are infants particularly good at perceiving animate motion and do they pay special attention to animate beings? Recent research has suggested that infants can perceive animate motion in very simple geometric figures, and that the chase scene is the earliest scenario that elicits this perception (Rochat, Morgan, & Carpenter, 1997; Frankenhuis & Barrett, 2012). One experiment is designed to illuminate some of the characteristics of this early perception. Another experiment is designed to find evidence of preferential attention to animate over inanimate objects in infants as is seen in adults using a change blindness paradigm. The hypothesis is that infants will be faster to notice a change in a picture if the depicted object is an animate compared to an inanimate object. Other experiments explore the nature of the animate category in infancy. One characteristic of core knowledge is the ability to include appropriate entities in the domain in question and to exclude those entities that do not belong in the domain. Following Baillargeon, the perception of animacy will be assessed using looking time to displaced objects. Infants are expected to look longer at displaced objects that are regarded as inanimate compared to those regarded as animate, since only animate objects can move themselves. A displaced inanimate object would thus be surprising. These studies also explore whether these psychological processes are different in those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These studies test whether those with ASD show the same attentional capture to perceived social motion that typical participants do, and whether the development of the perception of animate and inanimate objects are the same for those with ASD. Together, these studies are designed to shed light on the human psychology underlying social perception. Benefits to society will be both theoretical and practical. Our basic understanding of these important psychological processes will be enhanced, and we will have a better understanding of the social perceptual differences in those with ASD.