Reading:
Scholl, B. J. & Tremoulet, P. D. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences
The phenomena of perceptual causality and animacy explored by Michotte, Heider & Simmel, and other researchers are indeed quite fascinating. By simply watching several geometrical objects moving on the screen and receiving information on their basic kinematic properties like velocity & spatial movements, we can infer different kinds of interactions and possible causal relationships between them. More interestingly, we tend to attribute intentions, goals, and other mental states to these simple shapes, describing them as engaging in certain kinds of autonomous activities. And as these phenomena typically appear early in the developmental process of human infants, it is reasonable to assume that they probably serve some crucial functions in the formation of our understanding of the physical world and maybe also the concept of causality in a general sense.
In Scholl & Tremoulet’s article, they mentioned Fodor’s concept of modularity as a better substitute for the classical nature-nurture controversy on this issue. As scientists are struggling with whether these abilities are innate or not, they have neglected the possibility of “prepared learning” or “encapsulation” (see similar discussions in Professor Clark Barrett’s book on evolutionary psychology). I really enjoy the way of how they introduced the notion of modularity as a kind of “restriction” on the information flow. In other words, evolution can shape parts of the mind, like any other organs, to specialize in the processing of certain domains of information and selectively filter out the others. Nevertheless, to say they process information is to acknowledge that they are not completely encoded in our genes, as they require environmental inputs as the raw materials to operate upon. On the other hand, as they are restricted by the evolutionary process, we cannot label them to be entirely “learned” either. Therefore, we should embrace the evo-devo perspective on the problem of nature and nurture and view the development of our abilities like perceiving animacy and causality & inferring objects’ and others’ mental states (theory of mind) from an evolutionary psychology point of view, trying to understand their functions in assisting us to understand and adapt to the environment we are living in and ultimately increase our fitness.
From this point of view, I believe perceptual causality and animacy might actually be the emergent properties (byproducts) of infants’ development of other more general mental capacities, like intuitive physics and theory of mind. As we are living in this environment, it is better for us to constantly explore the interactions existing among objects around us and probably utilize this information in carrying out more efficient actions and also developing tools in the future. Comparing to a perceptual system that only “sees” segmental information and no implicit connections between them, our perceptual system, although may sometimes infer illusive causality and mental states, are more adaptive in interacting with dynamic environments as the relationships between objects are also being processed.