An Eye on Animacy and Intention

Frontiers in Psychology

Dorothea U. Martin¹ 

关键词: eye-gaze;    intention;    animacy;    infancy;    social cognition;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00829

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Hamlin (2015) argued that the human capacity for social evaluation begins to emerge just a few months after birth. This claim derives from studies using unfulfilled goal scenarios, with infants as young as 3 months of age (see Hamlin, 2013). In a typical “manual choice” experiment, infants are habituated to multiple helping and hindering events. For example, a protagonist may first fail to achieve a goal such as climbing a hill. Then, another character pushes the protagonist either up the hill (the “Helper”) or back down the hill (the “Hinderer”). Following habituation, infants are presented with the Helper and Hinderer. By 4.5 months of age, infants more often choose to reach for the Helper than the Hinderer. These results are interpreted as evidence for an early developing sense of morality (Hamlin, 2013, 2014; c.f. Cowell and Decety, 2015; Salvadori et al., 2015; Scola et al., 2015).

【 授权许可】

CC BY