Both the movements of people and inanimate objects are intimately bound up with physical causality. Furthermore, in contrast to object movements, causal relationships between limb movements controlled by humans and their body displacements uniquely reflect agency and goal-directed actions in support of social causality. To investigate the development of sensitivity to causal movements, we examined the looking behavior of infants between 9 and 18 months of age when viewing movements of humans and objects. We also investigated whether individual differences in gender and gross motor functions may impact the development of the visual preferences for causal movements. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with walking stimuli showing either normal body translation or a “moonwalk” that reversed the horizontal motion of body translations. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with unperformable actions beyond infants’ gross motor functions (i.e., long jump) either with or without ecologically valid body displacement. In Experiment 3, infants were presented with rolling movements of inanimate objects that either complied with or violated physical causality. We found that female infants showed longer looking times to normal walking stimuli than to moonwalk stimuli, but did not differ in their looking time to movements of inanimate objects and unperformable actions. In contrast, male infants did not show sensitivity to causal movement for either category. Additionally, female infants looked longer at social stimuli of human actions than male infants. Under the tested circumstances, our findings indicate that female infants have developed a sensitivity to causal consistency between limb movements and body translations of biological motion, only for actions with previous visual and motor exposures, and demonstrate a preference toward social information.

人和无生命物体的运动都与物理因果关系密切相关。此外，与物体运动相反，人类控制的肢体运动与其身体位移之间的因果关系独特地反映了支持社会因果关系的能动性和目标导向的行动。为了调查对因果运动的敏感性的发展，我们检查了 9 到 18 个月大的婴儿在观察人和物体的运动时的外观行为。我们还调查了性别和粗大运动功能的个体差异是否会影响对因果运动的视觉偏好的发展。在实验 1 中，婴儿接受步行刺激，显示正常的身体平移或逆转身体平移水平运动的“月球漫步”。在实验 2 中，无论有无生态有效的身体位移，婴儿都面临超出婴儿粗大运动功能（即跳远）的无法执行的动作。在实验 3 中，婴儿被呈现出符合或违反物理因果关系的无生命物体的滚动运动。我们发现，与月球行走刺激相比，女婴对正常步行刺激的注视时间更长，但对无生命物体的运动和无法执行的动作的注视时间没有差异。相比之下，男婴对任一类别的因果运动均不敏感。此外，与男婴相比，女婴对人类行为的社会刺激的观察时间更长。在经过测试的情况下，