Development of Intelligence - Cognitive Development and Commonsense Reasoning

Explore the intricacies of cognitive development and commonsense reasoning in this comprehensive lecture by Laura Schulz. Delve into the challenges of engineering commonsense intelligence and understand why it remains a complex problem in cognitive science. Examine how infants develop object knowledge, causal perception, and the ability to recognize agents. Investigate the factors influencing the perception of animacy, including self-initiated motion, biological motion, and functional cues. Gain insights into how children develop an understanding of intentional action and goal-directed behavior. Through this in-depth exploration, grasp the fundamental aspects of cognitive development and the formation of commonsense reasoning in early childhood.

Cognitive development and commonsense reasoning
Underestimating the challenge of commonsense intelligence
Commonsense as the hard problem of cognitive science Suppose you wanted to engineer commonsense how would you do it?
Commonsense is not a problem for children
Understanding commonsense
The object mystery
Spelke, et al., Origins of Knowledge
Interim summary: infant object knowledge
Core object knowledge
"Seeing" causality for Michottean launching events
Infant causal perception
Early representations of...
Discussion: Agents v. objects
Self-initiated movement
Self-initiated motion -- not true for objects
Non-Newtonian movement: biological motion . Factors affecting perception of animacy changes direction, speed and orientation
Functional cues: Contingent behavior
Interim summary: recognizing agents
Having goals: the "aboutness" of intentional action