When shapes are more than shapes: perceptual, developmental, and neurophysiological basis for attributions of animacy and theory of mind

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Emily D. Grossman¹  Sajjad Torabian² 

[1]Visual Perception and Neuroimaging Lab, Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States

[2]null

关键词: social cognition;    cognitive development;    animacy;    agency;    theory of mind;    motion perception;    Heider and Simmel;    default-mode network;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1168739

 received in 2023-02-18, accepted in 2023-07-25,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Among a variety of entities in their environment, what do humans consider alive or animate and how does this attribution of animacy promote development of more abstract levels of mentalizing? By decontextualizing the environment of bodily features, we review how physical movements give rise to perceived animacy in Heider-Simmel style animations. We discuss the developmental course of how perceived animacy shapes our interpretation of the social world, and specifically discuss when and how children transition from perceiving actions as goal-directed to attributing behaviors to unobservable mental states. This transition from a teleological stance, asserting a goal-oriented interpretation to an agent's actions, to a mentalistic stance allows older children to reason about more complex actions guided by hidden beliefs. The acquisition of these more complex cognitive behaviors happens developmentally at the same time neural systems for social cognition are coming online in young children. We review perceptual, developmental, and neural evidence to identify the joint cognitive and neural changes associated with when children begin to mentalize and how this ability is instantiated in the brain.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Torabian and Grossman.