The next talk in the CDC Seminar series will be given by Mikołaj Hernik, CEU Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 5 PM Location: Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3 em. Front matters: On infants’ ability to fast-map fronts of novel agents Abstract: Bodies of almost all modern animals, including all vertebrates, are organized according to a bilateral body-plan with a pronounced anterio-posterior axis. In other words, most animals have fronts and backs. In addition, in many organisms neuronal structures (e.g. brains in vertebrates) tend to be accumulated towards their frontal parts (an evolutionary trend called cephalization). These two general facts of animal evolution may have tremendous significance for a cognitive grasp of animal behavior for two reasons: (i) the ubiquitous bilateral and cephalized body plan promotes salient differences in morphology (most animals’ fronts tend to look different from their backs); (ii) the body plan constrains animal locomotion (some obvious exceptions notwithstanding, animals tend to move facing forward). As a consequence, animal’s orientation in motion is a reliable source of information about its frontal features (the parts at the front of a moving animal are very likely to *be* its frontal features). But also, the location of the already known frontal features of an animal in rest is a reliable source of information about that animal’s ability to act (it is more likely to start moving in the direction determined by its frontal features). I am going to present results from a series of studies designed to test whether preverbal human infants can engage in such inferences. Indeed infants in their first year of life are sensitive to front-movement mismatches, they fast-map novel frontal features from the agent’s behavior and take their orientation into account when anticipating the agent’s subsequent actions. I will argue that the ubiquity of bilateral body plan might have resulted in cognitive adaptations for processing the movement-front co-relation. _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu