Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Good Ideas [319behind the right edge of a right screen without moving through the gapbetween the screens, she assumes she is seeing two objects. When shesees an object pass behind the left screen, reappear at the other edge ofthe screen, cross the gap, and then pass behind the right screen, sheassumes she is seeing one object.A third principle is that objects are cohesive. Infants are surprisedwhen a hand picks up what looks like an object but part of the objectstays behind.A fourth principle is that objects move each other by contact only—no action at a distance. After repeatedly seeing an object pass behind ascreen and another object pop out, babies expect to see one launchingthe other like billiard balls. They are surprised when the screen revealsone ball stopping short and the second just up and leaving.So three- to four-month-old infants see objects, remember them, andexpect them to obey the laws of continuity, cohesion, and contact as theymove. Babies are not as stoned as James, Piaget, Freud, and othersthought. As the psychologist David Geary has said, James' "blooming,buzzing confusion" is a good description of the parents' life, not theinfant's. The discovery also overturns the suggestion that babies stoptheir world from spinning by manipulating objects, walking around them,talking about them, or hearing them talked about. Three-month-olds canbarely orient, see, touch, and reach, let alone manipulate, walk, talk, andunderstand. They could not have learned anything by the standard techniquesof interaction, feedback, and language. Nonetheless, they aresagely understanding a stable and lawful world.Proud parents should not call MIT admissions just yet. Small babieshave an uncertain grasp, at best, of gravity. They are surprised when ahand pushes a box off a table and it remains hovering in midair, but theslightest contact with the edge of the table or a fingertip is enough forthem to act as if nothing were amiss. And they are not fazed when ascreen rises to reveal a falling object that has defied gravity by coming torest in midair. Nor are they nonplussed when a ball rolls right over a largehole in a table without falling through. Infants don't quite have inertiadown, either. For example, they don't care when a ball rolls toward onecorner of a covered box and then is shown to have ended up in the othercorner.But then, adults' grasp of gravity and inertia is not so firm, either. Thepsychologists Michael McCloskey, Alfonso Caramazza, and Bert Greenasked college students what would happen when a ball shot out of a