Abstract

The goal of the present research was to investigate whether schematic biological motion serves as a cue to the concept of animacy in infancy. In order to present motion cues in the absence of bodily form cues, Michotte’s (1963) schematic biological motion stimuli (i.e., shape rhythmically expanding/contracting in the direction of movement) were used. The video animations displayed an amorphous shape moving in this way behind a screen (i.e., the shadow) and assessed looking patterns when the screen was removed to reveal either an animate or inanimate exemplar in the test phase. In Experiment 1, familiar exemplars of animate entities (i.e., dog, cow) were used as test items. In Experiment 2, the test objects were unfamiliar category exemplars associated with this type of motion (i.e., worm, caterpillar). Infants (10- and 18-months) looked longer when biological motion cues were congruent with the test items in Experiment 1, but 10-month-olds did not show differential looking across congruent and incongruent trials in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that the schematic biological motion stimulus does not serve as a primitive cue to the concept of animacy in infancy.