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Highlights • Force dynamics theory can be applied to consider the development of causal reasoning. • Five- to 6-year-olds infer causes of motion that align with semantic categories. • Five- to 6-year-olds focus on a single cause when two force vectors are not parallel. • Children's reasoning about causal forces reflects causal and semantic interpretations. Abstract Göksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013) used force dynamics, or the semantic categories defined by spatial arrays of forces, to study the development of preschoolers' predictions about the outcomes of forces working in concert. The current study extends this approach to problems requiring inferences about causal factors. In total, 30 5- and 6-year-old children were asked to identify and coordinate forces to achieve a result. Problems varied in the number and orientation of forces, mirroring spatial arrays characteristic of categories like prevent (i.e., opposing forces). Children successfully inferred causes of single- and dual-force events, performing best when problems reflected the spatial arrays of forces described in language. Results support force dynamics as a valuable framework for the development of force and motion representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Language learners must differentiate visual details that are distinguished lexically in their language. • Monolingual infants demonstrate sensitivity to non-lexical visual cues at 14 months, followed by a decline at 19 months. • Bilingual infants were tested on their sensitivity to non-lexical visual cues at 14-, 19- and 24 months. • Bilingual infants demonstrated postponed sensitivities as well as increased flexibility relative to monolingual infants. It is well known that infants undergo developmental change in how they respond to language-relevant visual contrasts. For example, when viewing motion events, infants' sensitivities to background information ("ground-path cues," e.g., whether a background is flat and continuous or bounded) change with age. Prior studies with English and Japanese monolingual infants have demonstrated that 14-month-old infants discriminate between motion events that take place against different ground-paths (e.g., an unbounded field vs a bounded street). By 19 months of age, this sensitivity becomes more selective in monolingual infants; only learners of languages that lexically contrast these categories, such as Japanese, discriminate between such events. In this study, we investigated this progression in bilingual infants. We first replicated past reports of an age-related decline in ground-path sensitivity from 14 to 19 months in English monolingual infants living in a multilingual society. English–Mandarin bilingual infants living in that same society were then tested on discrimination of ground-path cues at 14, 19, and 24 months. Although neither the English nor Mandarin language differentiates motion events based on ground-path cues, bilingual infants demonstrated protracted sensitivity to these cues. Infants exhibited a lack of discrimination at 14 months, followed by discrimination at 19 months and a subsequent decline in discrimination at 24 months. In addition, bilingual infants demonstrated more fine-grained sensitivities to subtle ground cues not observed in monolingual infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often use spontaneous gestures when communicating spatial information. We investigated focal brain-injured individuals to test the hypotheses that (1) naming motion event components of manner-path (represented by verbs-prepositions in English) are impaired selectively, (2) gestures compensate for impaired naming. Patients with left or right hemisphere damage (LHD or RHD) and elderly control participants were asked to describe motion events (e.g., running across) depicted in brief videos. Damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) produced impairments in naming paths of motion; lesions to the left caudate and adjacent white matter produced impairments in naming manners of motion. While the frequency of spontaneous gestures were low, lesions to the left aSTG significantly correlated with greater production of path gestures. These suggest that producing prepositions-verbs can be separately impaired and gesture production compensates for naming impairments when damage involves left aSTG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examined the effects of observing different types of gestures on recalling path and event information. • Individual differences in children's working memory, language, and gesture use were assessed. • Observing iconic gestures at encoding phase facilitates recall for both adults and children. • Children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. • Children's language skills could play a role in encoding specific information. This study examined (a) how observing different types of gestures while listening to a story affected the recall of path and event information in 5-year-old children (n = 71) and adults (n = 55) and (b) whether the effects of gesture type on children's recall of information were related to individual differences such as working memory, language abilities, spontaneous gesture use, and gesture production during the recall task. Participants were asked four questions to measure their spontaneous gesture frequency. They then listened to a story that included different path and event information. Depending on the assigned condition, participants listened to the story with the narrator producing iconic gestures (gestures having semantic meaning), beat gestures (rhythmic hand movements), or no gesture. We then asked participants to relate what happened in the story and administered a recognition task about the story. Children were given standardized tests to assess their language and working memory skills. Children and adults best recalled the story after observing iconic gestures as compared with children and adults presented with beat gestures or no gestures. Children who were exposed to iconic gestures during encoding better recalled event information than children in the other conditions. Children's language abilities, but not working memory, were related to their recall performance. More important, children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. These results suggest that observing iconic gestures at encoding facilitates recall and that children's language skills could play a role in encoding and using specific information provided by gestures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • We investigated 4-year-olds' causal reasoning about complex physical interactions. • As force configurations got more complex, predictions got less accurate. • Predictions were the least accurate with forces placed on two dimensions. • Estimating distance aggravated predictions, while estimating direction eased them. Reasoning about causal relations is essential for children's early cognitive development. The current study investigated 4-year-olds' (N = 58) reasoning about complex causal physical interactions in terms of predicting the endpoint of motion. In an online task, children were presented with four configurations that involved different interactions of forces and consequently different patterns of motion. These were Cause (one force moving an object), Enable (a secondary force promoting the motion), Prevent–180° (an opposing force hindering the motion), and Prevent–90° (two-dimensional; a perpendicular force altering the motion). Each prediction was made in terms of either the Distance or Direction of the motion, which was novel in this task compared with previous assessments. Results revealed differences between the configurations, with Cause being the easiest and Prevent–90° being the most difficult to predict. Furthermore, predictions were more accurate when options were about the motion's Direction, whereas Distance options may have aggravated reasoning. The current study extends previous findings on children's intuitive physics and causal cognition by showing that accuracy in reasoning not only is dependent on the number of forces and dimensions at work but also interacts with estimating the motion's Distance and Direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Structural cues of causal language facilitate young children's causal understanding. • Children benefit from both syntactic and verbal morphological cues. • No evidence for the influence of crosslinguistic differences. Young children have difficulties in understanding untypical causal relations. Although we know that hearing a causal description facilitates this understanding, less is known about what particular features of causal language are responsible for this facilitation. Here, we asked two questions. First, do syntactic and morphological cues in the grammatical structure of sentences facilitate the extraction of causal meaning? Second, do these different cues influence this facilitation to different degrees? We studied children learning either Swiss German or Turkish, two languages that differ in their expression of causality. Swiss German predominantly uses lexical causatives (e.g., schniidä [ cut ]), which lack a formal marker to denote causality. Turkish, alongside lexical causatives, uses morphological causatives, which formally mark causation (e.g., ye [ eat ] vs. yeDIr [ feed ]). We tested 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children's understanding of untypical cause–effect relations described with either noncausal language (e.g., Here is a cube and a car) or causal language using a pseudo-verb (e.g., lexical: The cube gorps the car). We tested 135 Turkish-learning children (noncausal, lexical, and morphological conditions) and 90 Swiss-German-learning children (noncausal and lexical conditions). Children in both language groups performed better in the causal language condition(s) than in the noncausal language condition. Furthermore, Turkish-learning children's performance in both the lexical and morphological conditions was similar to that of Swiss-German-learning children in the lexical condition and did not differ from each other. These findings suggest that the structural cues of causal language support children's understanding of untypical causal relations regardless of the type of construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]