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“There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents

From infancy, humans have the ability to distinguish animate agents from inert objects, and preschoolers map biological and mechanical insides to their appropriate kinds. However, less is known about how identifying something as an animate agent shapes specific inferences about its internal properti...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kominsky, Jonathan F., Shafto, Patrick, Bonawitz, Elizabeth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133430/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34010276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251081
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author Kominsky, Jonathan F.
Shafto, Patrick
Bonawitz, Elizabeth
author_facet Kominsky, Jonathan F.
Shafto, Patrick
Bonawitz, Elizabeth
author_sort Kominsky, Jonathan F.
collection PubMed
description From infancy, humans have the ability to distinguish animate agents from inert objects, and preschoolers map biological and mechanical insides to their appropriate kinds. However, less is known about how identifying something as an animate agent shapes specific inferences about its internal properties. Here, we test whether preschool children (N = 92; North American population) have specifically biological expectations about animate agents, or if they have more general expectations that animate agents should have an internal source of motion. We presented preschoolers with videos of two puppets: a “self-propelled” fur-covered puppet, and a fur-covered puppet that is seen to be moved by a human actor. In addition, we presented preschoolers with images of a familiar artifact (motorcycle) and familiar animal (sheep). For each item, we asked them to choose what they thought was inside each of these entities: nothing, biological insides, or mechanical insides. Preschoolers were less likely to say that a self-propelled fur-covered object was empty, compared to a fur-covered object that was moved by a human actor, which converges with past work with infants. However, preschoolers showed no specifically biological expectations about these objects, despite being able to accurately match biological insides to familiar animals and mechanical insides to familiar artifacts on the follow-up measure. These results suggest that preschoolers do not have specifically biological expectations about animate agents as a category, but rather general expectations that such agents should not be empty inside.
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spelling pubmed-81334302021-05-27 “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents Kominsky, Jonathan F. Shafto, Patrick Bonawitz, Elizabeth PLoS One Research Article From infancy, humans have the ability to distinguish animate agents from inert objects, and preschoolers map biological and mechanical insides to their appropriate kinds. However, less is known about how identifying something as an animate agent shapes specific inferences about its internal properties. Here, we test whether preschool children (N = 92; North American population) have specifically biological expectations about animate agents, or if they have more general expectations that animate agents should have an internal source of motion. We presented preschoolers with videos of two puppets: a “self-propelled” fur-covered puppet, and a fur-covered puppet that is seen to be moved by a human actor. In addition, we presented preschoolers with images of a familiar artifact (motorcycle) and familiar animal (sheep). For each item, we asked them to choose what they thought was inside each of these entities: nothing, biological insides, or mechanical insides. Preschoolers were less likely to say that a self-propelled fur-covered object was empty, compared to a fur-covered object that was moved by a human actor, which converges with past work with infants. However, preschoolers showed no specifically biological expectations about these objects, despite being able to accurately match biological insides to familiar animals and mechanical insides to familiar artifacts on the follow-up measure. These results suggest that preschoolers do not have specifically biological expectations about animate agents as a category, but rather general expectations that such agents should not be empty inside. Public Library of Science 2021-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8133430/ /pubmed/34010276 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251081 Text en © 2021 Kominsky et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kominsky, Jonathan F.
Shafto, Patrick
Bonawitz, Elizabeth
“There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title_full “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title_fullStr “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title_full_unstemmed “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title_short “There’s something inside”: Children’s intuitions about animate agents
title_sort “there’s something inside”: children’s intuitions about animate agents
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133430/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34010276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251081
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