--- abstract: "There is a growing debate among developmental theorists concerning the perception of causality in young infants. Some theorists advocate a top-down view, e.g., that infants reason about causal events on the basis of intuitive physical principles. Others argue instead for a bottom-up view of infant causal knowledge, in which causal perception emerges from a simple set of associative learning rules. In order to test the limits of the bottom-up view, we propose an optimal control model (OCM) of infant causal perception. OCM is trained to find an optimal pattern of eye movements for maintaining sight of a target object. We first present a series of simulations which illustrate OCM's ability to anticipate the outcome of novel, occluded causal events, and then compare OCM's performance with that of 9-month-old infants. The impications for developmental theory and research are discussed" altloc: - http://www-anw.cs.umass.edu/~matthew/academic/cogsci99.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: Cognitive Science confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: - mattiejo - '' creators_name: - family: Schlesinger given: Matthew honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Barto given: Andrew honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 1999 date_type: published datestamp: 2003-01-09 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/27/01 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 2701 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/2701/2/cogsci99.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: ~ lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:08 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: 625-630 pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: TRUE referencetext: ~ relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:46:21 subjects: - dev-psy - percep-cog-psy succeeds: 2692 suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: Optimal control methods for simulating the perception of causality in young infants type: confpaper userid: 3734 volume: ~