Structure, Motion, and Preschoolers' Perceptions of Social Causality

Abstract

Children 3, 4, and 5 years old provided free-response descriptions of one of four short video displays. These consisted of either the original Heider and Simmel (1944) animated film or one of three versions of the film that had been altered with a digital special-effects generator. In the altered versions, (a) dynamic aspects of the original film were disrupted but structural properties were left intact, (b) structural aspects of the film were disrupted but dynamic properties were preserved, or (c) both structural and dynamic properties of the film were disrupted. Analyses of children's descriptions indicated that their propensity to describe the original display in anthropomorphic terms, like adults', is based on the patterns of motion that characterize the film.