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Recap and Questions

Lecturer: Stephen A. Butterfill

A brief recap of what we’ve learnt so far about infant representations of objects and their causal interactions.

Slides

Notes

How do four month old infants segment objects, represent them as persisting and track some of their causal interactions?

An important step towards answering this question is Spelke’s discovery that all three abilities in infants—to segment objects, represent them as persisting and track some of their causal interactions—can be described by invoking to a single set of principles, the Principles of Object Perception.

Glossary

Principles of Object Perception : These are thought to include no action at a distance, rigidity, boundedness and cohesion.

References

Carey, S., & Spelke, E. S. (1994). Domain-specific knowledge and conceptual change. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.