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辅导的情况下很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的环境中生存至关重要，包括物理、空间、生物和算术等领域的早期能力。本文提出的研究重点是是否有证据表明核心知识的一个领域是社会领域。*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、利用他人的目标和愿望以及操纵工具的人生存的机会更大。相反，对于那些不能尊重等级制度和避免冒犯的人来说，有一种极端的危险：被排斥会导致死亡。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，本研究旨在测试婴儿是否表现出对社会信息感知的早期能力，以及他们是否对有生命的物体有注意偏好。本研究项目的总体目标是：1)了解人类心理过程的本质，使正常人能够感知动画运动，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）患者之间的差异。**具体的实验测试，例如：婴儿是否特别擅长感知动画动作，是否对有生命的生物特别关注？最近的研究表明，婴儿可以通过非常简单的几何图形感知动画运动，而追逐场景是引发这种感知的最早场景（Rochat, Morgan, Frankenhuis & Barrett, 2012）。一个实验旨在阐明这种早期感知的一些特征。另一个实验是为了寻找婴儿对有生命的物体比无生命的物体更优先注意的证据，这在成人中使用了变化盲视范式。假设是，如果描绘的物体是有生命的，而不是无生命的物体，婴儿会更快地注意到图片中的变化。**其他的实验探讨了婴儿期动物类别的本质。核心知识的一个特征是能够在相关领域中包含适当的实体，并排除那些不属于该领域的实体。继Baillargeon之后，动画的感知将通过观察位移物体的时间来评估。相比于那些被认为是有生命的物体，婴儿会花更长的时间看那些被认为是无生命的物体，因为只有有生命的物体才能自己移动。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在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者中是否有所不同。这些研究测试了自闭症患者对感知到的社会运动是否表现出与典型参与者相同的注意力捕捉，以及自闭症患者对有生命和无生命物体的感知发展是否相同。**总之，这些研究旨在阐明潜在社会知觉的人类心理。对社会的好处将是理论和实践的。我们对这些重要心理过程的基本认识将得到加强，我们将更好地了解自闭症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, 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.