Sunny Bok

Causal Perception of Animate Surface Features in 9- and 13-Month-Old Infants

Advisor: David Rakison
Major: Psychology
Minor: Creative Writing

Abstract

Causal perception is the ability to identify the agent and recipient in a physical event (e.g., when one pool ball hits another). An ongoing study that tests whether infants attend to the shape, color or rotation of an agent suggests that nine month old babies encode the color of an agent in a causal event whereas 13 month olds encode the shape and orientation of the agent but not its color. To expand on the ongoing study, the experiment proposed here will test the same age groups to determine what animate surface features of the agents infants encode. In this study, infants will be shown a series of causal events where the agent possesses eyes, a mouth and a pair of hands. In each of a series of test trials, each of these animate surface features will be replaced with a different feature. Looking times will be analyzed to determine which animated surface features the babies attended.

Bio

I am majoring in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. I am is particularly interested in child development and have been a research assistant in David Rakison’s Infant Cognition Lab since my freshman year. I hope to become a child psychiatrist and one day publish my own book. In my free time, I enjoy painting, tap dancing and crocheting.