Core cognition in adult vision: A surprising discrepancy between the principles of object continuity and solidity.

From an early age, humans intuitively expect physical objects to obey core principles, including continuity (objects follow spatiotemporally continuous paths) and solidity (two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time). These 2 principles are sometimes viewed as deriving from a single overarching "persistence" principle. Indeed, violations of solidity where one solid object seemingly passes through another could theoretically be interpreted as a violation of continuity, with an object "teleporting" to switch places rather than passing through a solid obstacle.

Nonverbal rhetoric: 2- to 4-year-old children select relevant evidence when trying to influence others.

This article investigates the early emergence of reason-giving. Toddlers are sensitive to disagreements, and they can track several kinds of informational access, such as visual perception. We investigated whether young children use these skills (a) when assessing whether providing reasons is needed and (b) when selecting appropriate behaviors to support their claims.

Social cognition in autism is associated with the neurodevelopment of the posterior superior temporal sulcus.

Objective: The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) plays a critical role in the 'social brain'. Its neurodevelopment and relationship with the social impairment in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are not well understood. We explored the relationship between social cognition and the neurodevelopment of the pSTS in ASD.

Optimistic expectations about communication explain children's difficulties in hiding, lying, and mistrusting liars.

We suggest that preschoolers' frequent obliviousness to the risks and opportunities of deception comes from a trusting stance supporting verbal communication. Three studies (N = 125) confirm this hypothesis. Three-year-olds can hide information from others (Study 1) and they can lie (Study 2) in simple settings.

Language Reflects "Core" Cognition: A New Theory About the Origin of Cross-Linguistic Regularities.

The underlying structures that are common to the world's languages bear an intriguing connection with early emerging forms of "core knowledge" (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007), which are frequently studied by infant researchers. In particular, grammatical systems often incorporate distinctions (e.g.

Epistemology for Beginners: Two- to Five-Year-Old Children's Representation of Falsity.

This paper investigates the ontogeny of human's naive concept of truth. Surprisingly, children find it hard to treat assertions as false before their fifth birthday. Yet, we show in six studies (N = 140) that human's concept of falsity develops early.

Why not the first-person plural in social cognition?

Through the mental alignment that sustains social interactions, the minds of individuals are shared. One interpretation of shared intentionality involves the ability of individuals to perceive features of the action scene from the perspective of the group (the "we-mode"). This first-person plural approach in social cognition is distinct from and preferable to the second-person approach proposed in the target article.

Social cognition in the we-mode.

According to many philosophers and scientists, human sociality is explained by the unique capacity to share the mental states of others. Shared intentionality has been widely debated in the past two decades in ways that also enlighten the current 'interactive turn' in social cognition. In this article, we examine the function and significance for interacting agents of sharing minds in an irreducibly collective mode called the 'we-mode'.