Infants’ knowledge of object motion and human action

This chapter demonstrates that infants have a set of innate beliefs concerning the basic properties of a physical object. It begins by reviewing the methods and findings of studies of infants' reasoning about inanimate object motion. Because human action appears to violate some of the constraints on inanimate objects, this chapter asks whether infants are sensitive to violations of constraints on objects by considering briefly how they reason about shadows. Finally, it discusses infants' reasoning about human action. It describes a study investigating whether infants understand that human action cannot be predicted solely on the basis of mechanical considerations. It then turns to the literature on social interaction and communication in infancy as a source of suggestions concerning infants' positive knowledge of human action.