THE DEVELOPMENT OF CORE KNOWLEDGE IN THE SOCIAL DOMAIN

发展心理学家将“核心知识”描述为婴儿和儿童在没有明确指导的情况下容易发展的特定知识领域。某些特定领域的知识被认为对我们在进化环境中的生存至关重要，包括物理、空间、生物和算术等领域的早期能力。这里提出的研究集中在是否有证据表明核心知识的一个领域是社会领域的问题。 社会认知在我们进化的环境中很重要。那些能够识别和记住个人，跟踪联盟，记住恩惠和债务，利用他人的目标和欲望以及操纵工具的人有更好的生存机会。相反，对于那些不尊重等级制度和不得罪人的人来说，则有一种极端的危险：排斥会导致死亡。因此，人类进化出了特定的、精心设计的社会认知工具。 社会感知信息是所有社会互动的基础，拟议的研究旨在测试婴儿是否表现出早期能力的社会信息的感知，以及他们是否有一个注意力偏好的动画对象。这项研究计划的总体目标是：1）了解人类心理过程的本质，这些心理过程允许典型的人感知动画运动来感知追逐场景，2）了解这些社会感知过程在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者中的差异。 具体的实验测试，例如：婴儿是否特别擅长感知有生命的运动，他们是否特别注意有生命的生物？最近的研究表明，婴儿可以在非常简单的几何图形中感知动画运动，追逐场景是最早的场景，激发了这种感知（Rochat，Morgan，& Carpenter，1997; Frankenhuis & Barrett，2012）。一个实验旨在阐明这种早期感知的一些特征。另一个实验的目的是寻找证据，优先注意有生命的物体，在婴儿中看到的是在成年人使用变化盲范式。假设是，婴儿将更快地注意到图片中的变化，如果所描绘的对象是一个有生命的物体相比，一个无生命的物体。 其他实验探索了婴儿期的生命类别的性质。核心知识的一个特点是能够将适当的实体纳入有关领域，并排除不属于该领域的实体。在Baillargeon之后，将使用对移位物体的注视时间来评估对生命的感知。与被认为是有生命的物体相比，婴儿被认为会更长时间地观察被认为是无生命的物体，因为只有有生命的物体才能移动自己。因此，一个移位的无生命物体将是令人惊讶的。 这些研究还探讨了这些心理过程是否与自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者不同。这些研究测试了ASD患者是否表现出与典型参与者相同的对感知社会运动的注意力捕获，以及ASD患者对有生命和无生命物体的感知的发展是否相同。 总之，这些研究旨在揭示社会感知背后的人类心理。对社会的益处将是理论上和实践上的。我们对这些重要心理过程的基本理解将得到加强，我们将更好地理解ASD患者的社会感知差异。

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.