@article {5006, title = {Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships}, journal = {Science}, volume = {375}, year = {2022}, month = {01/2022}, pages = {311 - 315}, abstract = {

Across human societies, people form {\textquotedblleft}thick{\textquotedblright} relationships characterized by strong attachments, obligations, and mutual responsiveness. People in thick relationships share food utensils, kiss, or engage in other distinctive interactions that involve sharing saliva. We found that children, toddlers, and infants infer that dyads who share saliva (as opposed to other positive social interactions) have a distinct relationship. Children expect saliva sharing to happen in nuclear families. Toddlers and infants expect that people who share saliva will respond to one another in distress. Parents confirm that saliva sharing is a valid cue of relationship thickness in their children{\textquoteright}s social environments. The ability to use distinctive interactions to infer categories of relationships thus emerges early in life, without explicit teaching; this enables young humans to rapidly identify close relationships, both within and beyond families.

}, issn = {0036-8075}, doi = {10.1126/science.abh1054}, url = {https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh1054}, author = {Thomas, Ashley J. and Woo, Brandon and Nettle, Daniel and Elizabeth S Spelke and Rebecca Saxe} } @article {5065, title = { AGENT: A Benchmark for Core Psychological Reasoning}, year = {2021}, month = {07/2021}, author = {Tianmin Shu and Abhishek Bhandwaldar and Chuang Gan and Kevin A Smith and Shari Liu and Dan Gutfreund and Elizabeth S Spelke and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Tomer D. Ullman} } @article {4406, title = {The ability to predict actions of others from distributed cues is still developing in children}, journal = {PsyArXiv Preprints}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2020}, abstract = {

Adults use distributed cues in the bodies of others to predict and counter their actions. To investigate the development of this ability, adults and 6- to 8-year-old children played a competitive game with a confederate who reached toward one of two targets. Child and adult participants, who sat across from the confederate, attempted to beat the confederate to the target by touching it before the confederate did. Adults used cues distributed through the head, shoulders, and body to predict the reaching actions. Children, in contrast, used cues in the arms and torso but not in the head, face or shoulders to predict the actions. These results provide evidence for a qualitative change in the ability to respond rapidly to predictive cues to others{\textquoteright} actions develops slowly over childhood. Despite children{\textquoteright}s sensitivity to eye gaze even in infancy, cues from the head and body do not influence their action predictions as late as 8 years of age.

}, keywords = {Action prediction, action understanding, Biological motion, development, Social interaction}, doi = {10.31234/osf.io/pu3tf}, author = {Daniel Kim and Emalie McMahon and Samuel Mehr and Ken Nakayama and Elizabeth S Spelke and Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam} } @conference {4817, title = {The fine structure of surprise in intuitive physics: when, why, and how much?}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 42th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020, virtual, July 29 - August 1, 2020}, year = {2020}, url = {https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2020/papers/0761/index.html}, author = {Kevin A Smith and Lingjie Mei and Shunyu Yao and Jiajun Wu and Elizabeth S Spelke and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Tomer D. Ullman}, editor = {Stephanie Denison and Michael Mack and Yang Xu and Blair C. Armstrong} } @conference {4542, title = {Infants represent {\textquoteright}like-kin{\textquoteright} affiliation }, booktitle = {Budapest Conference on Cognitive Development}, year = {2020}, month = {01/2020}, address = {Budapest, Hungary}, author = {Ashley J. Thomas and Rebecca Saxe and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4809, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} sensitivity to shape changes in 2D visual forms}, journal = {Infancy}, volume = {25}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, pages = {618 - 639}, issn = {1525-0008}, doi = {10.1111/infa.12343}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15327078/25/5}, author = {Dillon, Moira R. and Izard, V{\'e}ronique and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4812, title = {Learning from multiple informants: Children{\textquoteright}s response to epistemic bases for consensus judgments}, journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, volume = {192}, year = {2020}, month = {04/2020}, pages = {104759}, keywords = {Consensus, Epistemic vigilance, Selective learning, social cognition, Testimony, Young children}, issn = {00220965}, doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104759}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022096519303108}, author = {Kim, Sunae and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4814, title = {Online Developmental Science to Foster Innovation, Access, and Impact}, journal = {Trends in Cognitive Sciences}, volume = {24}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, pages = {675 - 678}, issn = {13646613}, doi = {10.1016/j.tics.2020.06.004}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1364661320301455}, author = {Sheskin, Mark and Scott, Kimberly and Mills, Candice M. and Bergelson, Elika and Bonawitz, Elizabeth and Elizabeth S Spelke and Fei-Fei, Li and Keil, Frank C. and Gweon, Hyowon and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Julian Jara-Ettinger and Adolph, Karen E. and Rhodes, Marjorie and Frank, Michael C. and Mehr, Samuel A. and Laura Schulz} } @proceedings {4261, title = {Draping an Elephant: Uncovering Children{\textquoteright}s Reasoning About Cloth-Covered Objects}, year = {2019}, month = {07/2019}, address = {Montreal, Canada}, abstract = {

Humans have an intuitive understanding of physics. They can predict how a physical scene will unfold, and reason about how it came to be. Adults may rely on such a physical representation for visual reasoning and recognition, going beyond visual features and capturing objects in terms of their physical properties. Recently, the use of draped objects in recognition was used to examine adult object representations in the absence of many common visual features. In this paper we examine young children{\textquoteright}s reasoning about draped objects in order to examine the develop of physical object representation. In addition, we argue that a better understanding of the development of the concept of cloth as a physical entity is worthwhile in and of itself, as it may form a basic ontological category in intuitive physical reasoning akin to liquids and solids. We use two experiments to investigate young children{\textquoteright}s (ages 3{\textendash}5) reasoning about cloth-covered objects, and find that they perform significantly above chance (though far from perfectly) indicating a representation of physical objects that can interact dynamically with the world. Children{\textquoteright}s success and failure pattern is similar across the two experiments, and we compare it to adult behavior. We find a small effect, which suggests the specific features that make reasoning about certain objects more difficult may carry into adulthood.

}, keywords = {analysis-by-synthesis, cloth, cognitive development, imagination, intuitive physics, object recognition, occlusion, perception, vision}, url = {https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2019/papers/0506/index.html}, author = {Tomer D Ullman and Eliza Kosoy and Ilker Yildirim and Amir Arsalan Soltani and Max Siegel and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {4449, title = {Hard choices: Children{\textquoteright}s understanding of the cost of action selection. }, booktitle = {Cognitive Science Society}, year = {2019}, author = {Shari Liu and Fiery A Cushman and Samuel J Gershman and Kool, Wouter and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4194, title = {Language, gesture, and judgment: Children{\textquoteright}s paths to abstract geometry}, journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, volume = {177}, year = {2019}, month = {01/2019}, pages = {70 - 85}, abstract = {

As infants, children are sensitive to geometry when recognizing objects or navigating through rooms; however, explicit knowledge of geometry develops slowly and may be unstable even in adults. How can geometric concepts be both so accessible and so elusive? To examine how implicit and explicit geometric concepts develop, the current study assessed, in 132 children (3-8 years old) while they played a simple geometric judgment task, three distinctive channels: children{\textquoteright}s choices during the game as well as the language and gestures they used to justify and accompany their choices. Results showed that, for certain geometric properties, children chose the correct card even if they could not express with words (or gestures) why they had made this choice. Furthermore, other geometric concepts were expressed and supported by gestures prior to their articulation in either choices or speech. These findings reveal that gestures and behavioral choices may reflect implicit knowledge and serve as a foundation for the development of geometric reasoning. Altogether, our results suggest that language alone might not be enough for expressing and organizing geometric concepts and that children pursue multiple paths to overcome its limitations, a finding with potential implications for primary education in mathematics.

}, keywords = {Explicit knowledge; Geometrical reasoning; Gestures; Implicit knowledge; Language; Thought}, issn = {00220965}, doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.015}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022096517306252}, author = {Calero, Cecilia I. and Shalom, Diego E. and Elizabeth S Spelke and Sigman, Mariano} } @proceedings {4380, title = {Modeling Expectation Violation in Intuitive Physics with Coarse Probabilistic Object Representations}, year = {2019}, month = {11/2019}, address = {Vancouver, Canada}, abstract = {

From infancy, humans have expectations about how objects will move and interact. Even young children expect objects not to move through one another, teleport, or disappear. They are surprised by mismatches between physical expectations and perceptual observations, even in unfamiliar scenes with completely novel objects. A model that exhibits human-like understanding of physics should be similarly surprised, and adjust its beliefs accordingly. We propose ADEPT, a model that uses a coarse (approximate geometry) object-centric representation for dynamic 3D scene understanding. Inference integrates deep recognition networks, extended probabilistic physical simulation, and particle filtering for forming predictions and expectations across occlusion. We also present a new test set for measuring violations of physical expectations, using a range of scenarios derived from de- velopmental psychology. We systematically compare ADEPT, baseline models, and human expectations on this test set. ADEPT outperforms standard network architectures in discriminating physically implausible scenes, and often performs this discrimination at the same level as people.

}, url = {http: //physadept.csail.mit.edu/}, author = {Kevin A Smith and Lingjie Mei and Shunyu Yao and Jiajun Wu and Elizabeth S Spelke and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Tomer D. Ullman} } @article {4282, title = {Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants}, journal = {PNAS}, year = {2019}, month = {08/2019}, abstract = {

We investigated the origins and interrelations of causal knowledge and knowledge of agency in 3-month-old infants, who cannot yet effect changes in the world by reaching for, grasping, and picking up objects. Across 5 experiments, n = 152 prereaching infants viewed object-directed reaches that varied in efficiency (following the shortest physically possible path vs. a longer path), goal (lifting an object vs. causing a change in its state), and causal structure (action on contact vs. action at a distance and after a delay). Prereaching infants showed no strong looking preference between a person{\textquoteright}s efficient and inefficient reaches when the person grasped and displaced an object. When the person reached for and caused a change in the state of the object on contact, however, infants looked longer when this action was inefficient than when it was efficient. Three-month-old infants also showed a key signature of adults{\textquoteright} and older infants{\textquoteright} causal inferences: This looking preference was abolished if a short spatial and temporal gap separated the action from its effect. The basic intuition that people are causal agents, who navigate around physical constraints to change the state of the world, may be one important foundation for infants{\textquoteright} ability to plan their own actions and learn from the acts of others.

}, issn = {1091-6490}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904410116}, url = {https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/08/19/1904410116/tab-article-info}, author = {Shari Liu and Neon B. Brooks and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4452, title = {Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants.}, year = {2019}, author = {Shari Liu and Neon B. Brooks and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3773, title = {At 4.5 but not 5.5 years, children favor kin when the stakes are moderately high}, journal = {PLOS ONE}, volume = {13}, year = {2018}, month = {08/2018}, chapter = {e0202507}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0202507}, url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202507}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3589, title = {From Map Reading to Geometric Intuitions}, journal = {Developmental Psychology}, year = {2018}, month = {03/2018}, abstract = {

The origins and development of our geometric intuitions have been debated for millennia. The present study links children{\textquoteright}s developing intuitions about the properties of planar triangles to their developing abilities to read purely geometric maps. Six-year-old children are limited when navigating by maps that depict only the sides of a triangle in an environment composed of only the triangle{\textquoteright}s corners and vice versa. Six-year-old children also incorrectly judge how the angle size of the third corner of a triangle varies with changes to the other two corners. These limitations in map reading and in judgments about triangles are attenuated, respectively, by 10 and 12 years of age. Moreover, as children get older, their map reading predicts their geometric judgments on the triangle task. Map reading thus undergoes developmental changes that parallel an emerging capacity to reason explicitly about the distance and angle relations essential to euclidean geometry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000509.supp
}, keywords = {euclidean geometry, mathematical cognition, spatial cognition, spatial symbols}, issn = {0012-1649}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000509}, url = {http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-12810-001}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {4192, title = {The statistical shape of geometric reasoning}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, volume = {8}, year = {2018}, month = {08/2018}, abstract = {

Geometric reasoning has an inherent dissonance: its abstract axioms and propositions refer to perfect, idealized entities, whereas its use in the physical world relies on dynamic perception of objects. How do abstract Euclidean concepts, dynamics, and statistics come together to support our intuitive geometric reasoning? Here, we address this question using a simple geometric task {\textendash} planar triangle completion. An analysis of the distribution of participants{\textquoteright} errors in localizing a fragmented triangle{\textquoteright}s missing corner reveals scale-dependent deviations from a deterministic Euclidean representation of planar triangles. By considering the statistical physics of the process characterized via a correlated random walk with a natural length scale, we explain these results and further predict participants{\textquoteright} estimates of the missing angle, measured in a second task. Our model also predicts the results of a categorical reasoning task about changes in the triangle size and shape even when such completion strategies need not be invoked. Taken together, our findings suggest a critical role for noisy physical processes in our reasoning about elementary Euclidean geometry.

}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-018-30314-y}, url = {http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30314-y}, author = {Hart, Yuval and Moira R Dillon and Andrew Marantan and Cardenas, Anna L. and Elizabeth S Spelke and Mahadevan, L.} } @article {4193, title = {Third-Party Preferences for Imitators in Preverbal Infants}, journal = {Open Mind}, volume = {2}, year = {2018}, month = {12/2018}, pages = {61 - 71}, abstract = {

Participants in social interactions often imitate one another, thereby enhancing their affiliation. Here we probe the nature and early development of imitation-based affiliation through studies of infants{\textquoteright} preferences for animated characters who imitate, or are imitated by, other characters. Four experiments provide evidence that preverbal infants preferentially attend to and approach individuals who imitate others. This preferential engagement is elicited by the elements of mimicry in simple acts of helping. It does not, however, extend to the targets of imitation in these interactions. This set of findings suggests infants{\textquoteright} imitation-based preferences are not well explained by homophily, prestige, or familiarity. We propose instead that infants perceive imitation as an indicator of valuable attributes in a potential social partner, including the capacity and motivation for social attention and coordinated action.

}, keywords = {imitation, infancy, social cognition}, doi = {10.1162/opmi_a_00018}, url = {https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/opmi_a_00018}, author = {Lindsey J Powell and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2534, title = {The cradle of social knowledge: Infants{\textquoteright} reasoning about caregiving and affiliation}, journal = {Cognition}, volume = {159}, year = {2017}, month = {02/2017}, pages = {102-116}, abstract = {

Considerable research has examined infants{\textquoteright} understanding and evaluations of social agents, but two questions remain unanswered: First, do infants organize observed social relations into larger structures, inferring the relationship between two social beings based on their relations to a third party? Second, how do infants reason about a type of social relation prominent in all societies: the caregiving relation between parents and their babies? In a series of experiments using animated events, we ask whether 15- to 18-month-old infants infer that two babies who were comforted by the same adult, or two adults who comforted the same baby, will affiliate with one another. We find that infants make both of these inferences, but they make no comparable inferences when presented with the same visible events with voices that specify a peer context, in which one adult responds to another laughing adult. Thus, infants are sensitive to at least one aspect of caregiving and organize relations between infants and adults into larger social structures.

}, keywords = {caregiving, social cognition, social development}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2016.11.008}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @proceedings {2605, title = {Critical Cues in Early Physical Reasoning}, year = {2017}, address = {Austin, TX}, author = {Tomer Ullman and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3477, title = {Five-month-old infants attend to responsive caregivers}, year = {2017}, address = {Portland, OR}, abstract = {

Toddlers are sensitive to comforting interactions in animated events with geometric forms of different sizes that first move together, then separate, prompting the smaller form to emit a baby{\textquoteright}s cry (Johnson et al., 2007), and they expect adults who comfort the same crying baby to engage with one another (Spokes \& Spelke, 2017), but an earlier sensitivity to comforting interactions is unknown. Two OSF- preregistered experiments (N=32) asked if 5-month-old infants prefer an adult who comforts a crying baby over one who does not. In Experiment 1, infants viewed alternating events in which a baby cried, and two adults responded by approaching or fleeing the baby, moving the same distances in different directions. When the adults then appeared together without the baby for one 20-sec visual preference trial, infants looked longer to the responsive adult, M = 0.608, SD = 0.206, t(15) = 2.167, p = 0.047, Figure 1. Experiment 2 replaced the crying baby with a car emitting a siren noise, comparable in salience to a baby{\textquoteright}s cry. Infants looked as long at approach and avoid events as in Exp. 1 but showed no test preference for the adult who approached the car, M = 0.486, SD = 0.212, t(15) = 0.264, p = 0.795, Figure 1. Infants{\textquoteright} looking patterns in Exp. 1 thus cannot be explained by a general preference for an approaching over avoiding adult and suggest that infants attend to more responsive caregivers before they can approach or use language to communicate with their own social partners.

}, url = {https://cogdevsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CDS2017AbstractBook.pdf}, author = {A C Spokes and Tara Venkatesan and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @proceedings {3478, title = {Four-year-old children favor kin when the stakes are higher}, year = {2017}, address = {Portland, OR}, abstract = {

Only in cases when the stakes are high--donating a kidney or risking injury to rescue someone in peril-- do adults report more willingness to help siblings over close friends (Stewart-Williams, 2007). When people are dividing plentiful, low-value resources, children expect them to share equally with friend and siblings (Olson \& Spelke, 2008). However, will children show a kinship preference when the stakes are higher? We first tested young children{\textquoteright}s relative favoring of kin versus friends and strangers in distributing limited resources--one item instead of many (Spokes \& Spelke, 2016). We found that 3- to 5- year-old children (n=252) shared more with kin and friends than with strangers but did not favor kin over friend, either when reasoning about fictional characters (Experiments 1, 3) or about their own friends and family (Experiment 2). This pattern of results could have occurred for two reasons: first, young children do not yet have the kinship index mechanisms that guide adults{\textquoteright} recent altruistic favors and reported likelihood of donating an organ to siblings (Lieberman, Tooby \& Cosmides, 2007). Second, the hypothetical costs and rewards used may not be relevant or valuable to children. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we asked whether children would show a preference for kin if the cost was more relevant to them--their own time and effort. In the present experiment, we asked if children would work harder for kin over non-kin when playing a challenging geometry game (Dillon, Huang, \& Spelke, 2013). Each round, they could earn stickers for a different recipient: themselves, a parent, sibling, friend, or an unfamiliar child. Children could end the round whenever they wanted. We measured the number of trials played, trials answered correctly, and duration of play. Data for the number of trials and duration played were log-normally distributed, so we log transformed these variables prior to analyses (Csibra, Hernik, Mascaro, Tatone, \& Lengyel, 2016). Across these measures, one-way ANOVAs revealed that four-year-olds (n=24) played more trials for their kin relations--siblings and parents--than for non-kin--friends and strangers, F(1, 46) = 4.27, p = .044, answered more trials correctly, F(1, 46) = 4.57, p = .038, and played marginally longer, F(1, 46) = 3.14, p = .083. There was no main effect of recipient when comparing across all four recipients nor significant pairwise comparisons. Five-year-olds (n=24) did not differ when playing for kin versus non-kin (ps \> .05). These findings provide initial evidence that four-year-old children calibrate their time and effort in a task differently according to who will reap the rewards, but five-year-olds do not. Five-year-olds may find the task easier and less costly or may have different social experiences having attended school. Nonetheless, we found that children{\textquoteright}s social decisions depend upon the recipient of their generosity. We provide initial evidence that children may favor kin when the stakes are higher and resources--their time and effort--are more meaningful to them: four-year-olds played more trials and did so more accurately when winning for kin.

}, url = {https://cogdevsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CDS2017AbstractBook.pdf}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3512, title = {Mind Games: Game Engines as an Architecture for Intuitive Physics}, journal = {Trends in Cognitive Science}, volume = {21}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, pages = {649 - 665}, chapter = {649}, issn = {1364-6613}, doi = {10.1016/j.tics.2017.05.012}, url = {https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(17)30113-4}, author = {Ullman, Tomer D. and Elizabeth S Spelke and Battaglia, Peter and Joshua B. Tenenbaum} } @article {2358, title = {Six-month-old infants expect agents to minimize the cost of their actions}, journal = {Cognition}, volume = {160}, year = {2017}, month = {03/2017}, pages = {35-42}, abstract = {

Substantial evidence indicates that infants expect agents to move directly to their goals when no obstacles block their paths, but the representations that articulate this expectation and its robustness have not been characterized. Across three experiments (total N = 60), 6-month-old infants responded to a novel, curvilinear action trajectory on the basis of its efficiency, in accord with the expectation that an agent will move to its goal on the least costly path that the environment affords. Infants expected minimally costly action when presented with a novel constraint, and extended this expectation to agents who had previously acted inefficiently. Infants{\textquoteright} understanding of goal-directed action cannot be explained alone by sen- sitivity to specific features of agent{\textquoteright}s actions (e.g. agents tend to move on straight paths, along supporting surfaces, when facing their goals directly) or extrapolations of agents{\textquoteright} past actions to their future ones (e.g. if an agent took the shortest path to an object in the past, it will continue to do so in the future). Instead, infants{\textquoteright} reasoning about efficiency accords with the overhypothesis that agents minimize the cost of their actions.

}, keywords = {cognitive development, goal inference, open data, open materials, social cognition}, issn = {00100277}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2016.12.007}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002771630302X}, author = {Shari Liu and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {2603, title = {Spatial cognition across development}, booktitle = {SRCD}, year = {2017}, address = {Austin, TX}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3485, title = {Ten-month-old infants infer the value of goals from the costs of actions}, journal = {Science}, volume = {358}, year = {2017}, month = {11/2017}, pages = {1038-1041}, chapter = {1038}, abstract = {

Infants understand that people pursue goals, but how do they learn which goals people prefer? We tested whether infants solve this problem by inverting a mental model of action planning, trading off the costs of acting against the rewards actions bring. After seeing an agent attain two goals equally often at varying costs, infants expected the agent to prefer the goal it attained through costlier actions. These expectations held across three experiments that conveyed cost through different physical path features (height, width, and incline angle), suggesting that an abstract variable{\textemdash}such as {\textquotedblleft}force,{\textquotedblright} {\textquotedblleft}work,{\textquotedblright} or {\textquotedblleft}effort{\textquotedblright}{\textemdash}supported infants{\textquoteright} inferences. We modeled infants{\textquoteright} expectations as Bayesian inferences over utility-theoretic calculations, providing a bridge to recent quantitative accounts of action understanding in older children and adults.

}, author = {Shari Liu and Ullman, Tomer D. and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2604, title = {Ten-month-old infants infer value from effort}, year = {2017}, address = {Austin, TX}, author = {Shari Liu and Tomer Ullman and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2636, title = {Ten-month-old infants infer value from effort}, year = {2017}, author = {Shari Liu and Tomer Ullman and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2606, title = {Young children{\textquoteright}s use of distance and angle information during map reading}, year = {2017}, address = {Austin, TX}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1821, title = {Children{\textquoteright}s Expectations and Understanding of Kinship as a Social Category}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = { 7}, year = {2016}, pages = {1664-1078}, abstract = {

In order to navigate the social world, children need to understand and make predictions about how people will interact with one another. Throughout most of human history, social groups have been prominently marked by kinship relations, but few experiments have examined children{\textquoteright}s knowledge of and reasoning about kinship relations.\  In the current studies, we investigated how 3- to 5-year-old children understand kinship relations, compared to non-kin relations between friends, with questions such as, {\textquotedblleft}Who has the same grandmother?{\textquotedblright} We also tested how children expect people to interact based on their relations to one another, with questions such as {\textquotedblleft}Who do you think Cara would like to share her treat with?{\textquotedblright} Both in a storybook context and in a richer context presenting more compelling cues to kinship using face morphology, 3- and 4-year-old children failed to show either robust explicit conceptual distinctions between kin and friends, or expectations of behavior favoring kin over friends, even when asked about their own social partners. By 5 years, children{\textquoteright}s understanding of these relations improved, and they showed some expectation that others will preferentially aid siblings over friends.\  Together, these findings suggest that explicit understanding of kinship develops slowly over the preschool years.

}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00440 }, url = {http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00440/full}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @inbook {2598, title = {Cognitive abilities of infants}, booktitle = {Scientists Making a Difference: One Hundred Eminent Behavioral and Brain Scientists Talk about Their Most Important Contributions}, year = {2016}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, organization = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {Cambridge, UK}, author = {Elizabeth S Spelke and R. J. Sternberg and S. T. Fiske and D. J. Foss} } @article {1808, title = {Continuous representations of action efficiency in infancy}, year = {2016}, month = {01/2016}, abstract = {

In reasoning about action, infants apply the principle of efficiency, recovering attention when agents pursue goals using curvilinear paths if a straight path was available (Csibra et al., 1999). What representations support these capacities? The present research explores the hypothesis that infants represent cost as a continuous function within a naive utility calculus (Jara-Ettinger et al., 2015) by testing 6-month-old infants{\textquoteright} expectations for efficiency using action trajectories differing in curvature. In Study 1, we habituated infants to a rational agent, whose goal-directed actions were constrained by tall barriers, and then measured how long infants attended when the same agent navigated over a novel, low barrier efficiently or inefficiently. In Study 2, we asked whether infants recover attention to inefficient actions solely on the basis of low-level perceptual properties by repeating Study 1 but moving the barrier beyond the agent{\textquoteright}s goal, causing all actions to be unconstrained. In Study 3, we used the unconstrained habituation events from Study 2 and the constrained test events from Study 1 to test whether infants expect an irrational agent to act efficiently given a novel constraint. Across these studies, we demonstrate that 6-month-olds (1) analyze trajectories of goal-directed action differing in curvature on the basis of their efficiency, (2) expect minimally costly action given novel constraints, even for previously irrational agents, and (3) differentiate between these actions on the basis of efficiency, not low-level perceptual differences in height or motion. Our findings indicate that continuous cost representations support an early, robust expectation for rational action.\ 

}, author = {Shari Liu and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @inbook {2597, title = {Core knowledge and conceptual change: A perspective on social cognition}, booktitle = {Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change}, year = {2016}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, organization = {Oxford University Press}, address = {New York}, author = {Elizabeth S Spelke and D. Barner and A. S. Baron} } @conference {1820, title = {Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks}, booktitle = {International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS)}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, LA}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {1962, title = {Effort as a bridging concept across action and action understanding: Weight and Physical Effort in Predictions of Efficiency in Other Agents}, booktitle = {International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) }, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana}, author = {Tomer Ullman and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {1961, title = {The Functions of Infants{\textquoteright} Social Categorization: Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks}, booktitle = {International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS)}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1818, title = {How Infants Reason About Affective States and Social Interactions}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana }, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2135, title = {The infancy of the human brain}, year = {2016}, month = {10/2016}, abstract = {

The human infant brain is the only known machine able to master a natural language and develop explicit, symbolic, and communicable systems of knowledge that deliver rich representations of the external world. With the emergence of non-invasive brain imaging, we now have access to the unique neural machinery underlying these early accomplishments. After describing early cognitive capacities in the domains of language and number, we review recent findings that underline the strong continuity between human infants{\textquoteright} and adults{\textquoteright} neural architecture, with notably early hemispheric asymmetries and involvement of frontal areas. Studies of the strengths and limitations of early learning, and of brain dynamics in relation to regional maturational stages, promise to yield a better understanding of the sources of human cognitive achievements.

}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.026}, author = {Dehaene-Lambertz, G. and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2595, title = {Mastery of the logic of natural numbers is not the result of mastery of counting: Evidence from late counters. }, journal = {Developmental Science}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1111/desc.12459}, author = {Julian Jara-Ettinger and Steve Piantadosi and Elizabeth S Spelke and Roger Levy and Edward Gibson} } @article {1810, title = {Pre-reaching infants expect causal agents to act efficiently without motor training}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, author = {Shari Liu and Neon B. Brooks and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1959, title = {Preverbal Infants{\textquoteright} Third-Party Imitator Preferences: Animated Displays versus Filmed Actors}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana}, abstract = {

Research on social imitation shows that, from toddlerhood to adulthood, individuals respond more positively to social partners who imitate them compared to those who do not (Chartrand \& Bargh, 1999; Meltzoff, 1990; Agnetta \& Rochat, 2004). It is unknown, however, whether (i) positive responses to imitation are present in the first year of life, before infants engage in robust social imitation themselves and (ii) whether positive evaluations of imitators are restricted to direct, 1st person interactions. A recent study found that infants 13 months old and younger who observed imitative and non-imitative interactions between animated, geometric figures looked at and reached for imitators more than non-imitators, but found no difference in looking to targets of imitation versus non-targets (Powell \& Spelke, in prep). These data suggest infants may recognize and prefer imitators on the basis of 3rd party observation. However, it is unknown whether this pattern would generalize from simplified, animated displays to more ecologically valid stimuli (e.g. videos of complex human movement).

In our current study, we tested 4- to 5.5-month-old infants (N = 112) using animations and videos of human actors. For both stimulus types, infants saw either two individuals take turns responding to a third, one imitating and one not (responders condition), or one individual respond to two others, imitating one but not the other (initiators condition; Figure 1). In the animated stimuli, each character jumped and made either a high- or low-pitched sound. In the video stimuli each actor made one of two hand motions modified from American Sign Language. The sound or motion matched in imitative interactions but not in non-imitative ones. Depending on condition, the experiment concluded with a differential looking test between either the imitating and non-imitating responder or the imitated and non-imitated initiator. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of condition (F(1,97) = 6.58; P \< .05) but not of stimulus type (P \> 0.8) on infants{\textquoteright} looking during the preference test. Regardless of stimulus type, infants in the responders condition looked longer to imitators (M = 6.79 s) than non-imitators (M = 4.38 s; t(47) = 4.05 P \< 0.001), while infants in the targets condition did not differentiate between targets (M = 5.89 s) and non-targets of imitation (M = 6.09 s; t(48) = 0.80; P \> 0.2). We are replicating the responders condition using videos of new actors performing simpler actions. Preliminary results indicate infants (N = 14 of an intended 32) continue to look longer at imitators than non-imitators. The congruent results obtained with both animated and video stimuli confirm the validity of the use of animated stimuli for studying infant social cognition. Additionally, these results demonstrate that young infants recognize imitation as 3rd party observers and are biased to attend more to those who have imitated others. Consistent with social imitation research, our results suggest infants may have an early-emerging preference for imitators. This potential preference may lay the foundation for the capacity to engage in socially guided learning.\ 

}, author = {Heather L Kosakowski and Lindsey J Powell and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2596, title = {Young Children{\textquoteright}s Use of Surface and Object Information in Drawings of Everyday Scenes}, journal = {Child Development}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1111/cdev.12658}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1668, title = {Children{\textquoteright}s expectations about training the approximate number system.}, journal = {British Journal of Developmental Psychology}, volume = {33}, year = {2015}, chapter = {411}, abstract = {

Humans possess a developmentally precocious and evolutionarily ancient Approximate Number System (ANS) whose sensitivity correlates with uniquely human symbolic arithmetic skills. Recent studies suggest that ANS training improves symbolic arithmetic, but such studies may engender performance expectations in their participants that in turn produce the improvement. Here we assessed 6- to 8-year-old children{\textquoteright}s expectations about the effects of numerical and non-numerical magnitude training, as well as states of satiety and restfulness, in the context of a study linking children{\textquoteright}s ANS practice to their improved symbolic arithmetic. We found that children did not expect gains in symbolic arithmetic after exercising the ANS, though they did expect gains in ANS acuity after training on any magnitude task. Moreover, children expected gains in symbolic arithmetic after a good night{\textquoteright}s sleep and their favorite breakfast. Thus, children{\textquoteright}s improved symbolic arithmetic after ANS training cannot be explained by their expectations about that training.

}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Pires, A. C. and Hyde, D. C. and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {1669, title = {Connecting core cognition, spatial symbols, and the abstract concepts of formal geometry.}, booktitle = {Cognitive Development Society Post-Conference, More on Development}, year = {2015}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1957, title = {Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, number = {ID: 325/PS-III: 39}, year = {2015}, month = {01/2015}, abstract = {

Considerable\  research\  has\  examined\  infants{\textquoteright}\  reasoning\  about\  and\  evaluations\  of\  social\  agents,\  but\  two\  questions\  remain\  unanswered: First, do infants organize observed social relations into larger structures, inferring the relationship between t wo social\  beings\  based\  on\  their\  relations\  to\  a\  third\  party?\  Second,\  how\  do\  infants\  reaso n\  about\  a\  type\  of\  social\  relations\  prominent\  in\  all\  societies:\  kinship\  relations\  that\  modulate\  caregiving?\  In\  a\  series\  of\  experiments\  using\  animated\  events,\  we\  ask\  whether\  9 - ,\  11 - ,\  and 15 - to 18 - month - old infants expect two babies\  who\  were comforted by the same caregiver, or two caregivers\  who comforted\  the same baby, to affiliate with one another. We find that older infants make these inferences in a caregiving context, but n ot in a\  different context involving social interactions among adults. Thus, infant s are sensitive to at least one aspect of kinship relations {\textemdash} caregiving {\textemdash} and organize these relations into larger social structures.

}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1344, title = {Early reasoning about affiliation and kinship.}, year = {2015}, month = {03/2015}, publisher = {Poster presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1670, title = {From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions.}, year = {2015}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1955, title = {From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions}, number = {ID: 316 / PS - I: 50}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, address = {Columbus, OH}, abstract = {

Euclidean\  geometry\  is\  highly\  intuitive\  to\  adults\  from\  diverse\  cultures,\  but\  the\  sources\  of\  these\  intuitions\  remain\  unknown.\  The\  present study investigates whether children{\textquoteright}s understanding of Euclidean geometry is linked to their use of spatial symbols.\  Six - ,\  10,\  and\  12 - year - old\  children\  were\  given\  tests\  of\  navigation\  by\  purely\  geometric\  maps, which\  required\  them\  to\  place\  objects\  in\  fragmented\  3D\  environments\  using\  2D\  maps\  highlighting\  the\  same\  or\  different\  geometric\  information\  as\  the\  3D\  environments.\  Children\  also\  completed\  a\  test\  of\  abstract\  geometric\  reasoning\  focused\  on\  triangle\  completion .\  Performance\  on\  the\  geometric\  reasoning\  test\  improved\  markedly\  with\  age,\  and\  this\  improvement\  was\  associated\  with\  more\  integrated\  interpretations\  of\  the\  geometric\  maps\  and\  environments.\  These\  findings\  connect\  the\  achievement\  of\  Euclidean\  intuitions\  to\  the mastery\  of\  spatial\  symbols.

}, url = {http://cogdevsoc.org/sites/default/files/Official\%20Full\%20Conference\%20Proceedings_10.10.pdf}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1887, title = {The Infancy of the Human Brain}, journal = {Neuron}, volume = {88}, year = {2015}, month = {Jan-10-2015}, pages = {93 - 109}, issn = {08966273}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.026}, url = {http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0896627315008156}, author = {Dehaene-Lambertz, G. and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1956, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} Categorization of Social Actions}, number = {ID: 476 / PS - II: 48}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, address = {Columbus, OH}, abstract = {

Infants use information about efficiency to identify agents{\textquoteright} physical goals. But how do they recognize actions with social rather than physical functions? They may rely on an understanding that socially meaningful actions work not by efficiently enacting physical changes, but instead through shared use across group members. We found support for this hypothesis across several experiments that probed the conditions under which 8- and 9-month-old infants expect an action to be performed by additional members of the initial actor{\textquoteright}s social group. Infants generalized actions to new members of social groups if and only if the actions in question werenon-instrumental and infants had observed two socially related individuals repeating the action, whether or not they were members of the group across which generalization was tested. Thus, infants use characteristics of social behavior {\textendash} physical inefficiency and shared use by group members {\textendash} to categorize actions as social.

}, author = {Lindsey J Powell and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1819, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, address = {Columbus, Ohio}, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1817, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1671, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} sensitivity to shape changes.}, year = {2015}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Izard, V. and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {867, title = {Isolating angle in infants{\textquoteright} detection of shape}, year = {2015}, author = {Moira R Dillon and V{\'e}ronique Izard and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2693, title = {Preverbal Infants{\textquoteright} Third-Party Imitator Preferences: Animated Displays versus Filmed Actors}, year = {2015}, month = {08/2015}, address = {MIT, Cambridge, MA}, author = {Heather L Kosakowski and Lindsey J Powell and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {869, title = {Reorientation ability predicts early spatial symbol reading}, booktitle = {2015 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting}, year = {2015}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1809, title = {Six-month-old infants represent action efficiency on a continuous scale.}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, address = {Columbus, Ohio}, author = {Shari Liu and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {868, title = {Young children{\textquoteright}s automatic and alternating use of scene and object information in spatial symbols.}, booktitle = {Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development}, year = {2015}, abstract = {

Although symbolic understanding has long been studied, little is known about the 2D shape information children use to relate symbols to their 3D referents. Our previous research suggests that young children rely on length and angle to find locations on objects, but on distance and direction to find locations in scenes. These studies, however, either presented drawings from non-canonical perspectives or probed children{\textquoteright}s use of symbols in unusual environments. Moreover, these studies explored the factors that limit children{\textquoteright}s understanding of spatial symbols, not the sources of their flexibility in this domain.

For the present study, we showed 144 4-year-old children three types of drawings of a typical room, depicting the room{\textquoteright}s objects, its extended surfaces, or both. In one task, children used the drawings to find targets located either at the junction of two extended surfaces in a room or next to objects in the room. In another task, children judged whether drawings that include just scene or just object information are better depictions of targets at these two types of locations.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  We found that the limitations previously observed in children{\textquoteright}s use of spatial symbols extend to highly realistic perspectival drawings: children perform better with scene drawings when targets are located at the junctions of extended surfaces in the room and better with object targets when targets are located near objects, but gain no additional benefit when presented with both types of information. In addition, children show no awareness of this pattern in their performance: they judge drawings of objects to be more informative of all target locations. Common drawings evidently present geometric information in a format automatically accessible to cognitive systems for navigation and object recognition. Young children nevertheless fail to integrate the information that these systems represent, even when shown drawings of the most familiar and natural kinds.

}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {866, title = {Core geometry in perspective}, journal = {Developmental Science}, year = {2014}, month = {11/2014}, abstract = {

Research on animals, infants, children, and adults provides evidence that distinct cognitive systems underlie navigation and object recognition. Here we examine whether and how these systems interact when children interpret 2D edge-based perspectival line drawings of scenes and objects. Such drawings serve as symbols early in development, and they preserve scene and object geometry from canonical points of view. Young children show limits when using geometry both in non-symbolic tasks and in symbolic map tasks that present 3D contexts from unusual, unfamiliar points of view. When presented with the familiar viewpoints in perspectival line drawings, however, do children engage more integrated geometric representations? In three experiments, children successfully interpreted line drawings with respect to their depicted scene or object. Nevertheless, children recruited distinct processes when navigating based on the information in these drawings, and these processes depended on the context in which the drawings were presented. These results suggest that children are flexible but limited in using geometric information to form integrated representations of scenes and objects, even when interpreting spatial symbols that are highly familiar and faithful renditions of the visual world.

}, doi = {10.1111/desc.12266}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1342, title = {Imitation Preferences of Preverbal Infants.}, year = {2014}, month = {08/2014}, publisher = {Poster presentation at the Center for Brain Minds and Machines Summer Conference, Cambridge, MA}, author = {Heather L Kosakowski and Lindsey J Powell and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1349, title = {Core foundations of abstract geometry}, journal = {Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, volume = {110}, year = {2013}, chapter = {14191}, abstract = {

Human adults from diverse cultures share intuitions about the points, lines, and figures of Euclidean geometry. Do children develop these intuitions by drawing on phylogenetically ancient and developmentally precocious geometric representations that guide their navigation and their analysis of object shape? In what way might these early-arising representations support later-developing Euclidean intuitions? To approach these questions, we investigated the relations among young children{\textquoteright}s use of geometry in tasks assessing: navigation; visual form analysis; and the interpretation of symbolic, purely geometric maps. Children{\textquoteright}s navigation depended on the distance and directional relations of the surface layout and predicted their use of a symbolic map with targets designated by surface distances. In contrast, children{\textquoteright}s analysis of visual forms depended on the size-invariant shape relations of objects and predicted their use of the same map but with targets designated by corner angles. Even though the two map tasks used identical instructions and map displays, children{\textquoteright}s performance on these tasks showed no evidence of integrated representations of distance and angle. Instead, young children flexibly recruited geometric representations of either navigable layouts or objects to interpret the same spatial symbols. These findings reveal a link between the early-arising geometric representations that humans share with diverse animals and the flexible geometric intuitions that give rise to human knowledge at its highest reaches. Although young children do not appear to integrate core geometric representations, children{\textquoteright}s use of the abstract geometry in spatial symbols such as maps may provide the earliest clues to the later construction of Euclidean geometry.

}, author = {Moira R Dillon and Yi Huang and Elizabeth S Spelke} }