Young infants' expectations about self-propelled objects

Young infants possess expectations about physical events. These findings support the notion that infants are born with an abstract, unconscious, physical-reasoning system. This chapter has two sections - a summary of results from experiments that compared the response of infants to various physical events involving an inert or a self-propelled object; and a discussion on the considered links between the concept of self-propelled objects explored in this chapter and other key concepts. This chapter suggests three conclusions: infants distinguish between inert and self-propelled objects and endow selfpropelled objects with an internal source of energy; infants do not view an object as selfpropelled unless it provides unambiguous evidence that it can act intentionally and thus has mental states; and the infants' concepts of self-propelled object and agent function as abstract 'kinds of explanations' that are devoid of all mechanistic details but still make possible rich inferences about objects' actions in new contexts.