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At the Psychology Department at University College London we are interested in how infants perceive events and actions in the world around them. Specifically we are looking into 1) how babies perceive cause and effect and 2) whether they are aware of the difference between animate (people, animals etc.) and inanimate objects. These perceptual capacities are both very important for later development. Cause and effect play a large part in understanding what is going on around us. In the physical domain for example, babies need to know how kicking an object imparts momentum to it and may set it in motion - or break it. In the social domain, babies need to know how actions cause reactions in others, both behavioural and emotional. Dividing the world up into animate and inanimate objects is equally important because it helps to determine how we think, feel and behave towards these objects. For example, because we know that a baby is a person we will smile and talk to him or her.
How do you 'ask' a pre-verbal infant about what they know? One way of doing this is to exploit the fact that babies look longer at surprising or novel events than at familiar ones. By measuring infant looking times we can find out whether they are noticing differences in their perceptual world and therefore how they categorise the environment. We show the infants simple shapes moving and interacting on a computer screen. By measuring looking times we can find out whether they distinguish between 1) different types of causal events (e.g. psychological versus physical) and 2) different categories of objects (e.g. animals versus inanimate shapes). In addition, we can find out something about the relationship between perception of causality and animacy in infancy, for example, whether infants understand that animals and humans (animate objects) can interact with each other in a goal directed or psychological way, whereas inanimate objects are limited to interacting on a physical level.
If you want to find out more about your baby's cognitive development you could try reading:
Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl (2001). How Babies Think: The Science of Childhood. Paperback: Paperback: £7.99 (approximately).