This study explores the ways in which infants reason
about h u m a n action. Although recent research
supports the view that young infants' reasoning about
object physics is guided by a set of core principles.
there is little evidence for early principles of this sort
in infants' reasoning about human action. T o explore
this issue, a habituation study was done comparing 7-
month-olds' reasoning about simple causal sequences
involving people to their reasoning about those
involving inanimate objects. Our findingssuggest
that although 7-month-olds expect that the motion of
inanimate objects will be constrained by the principle
of contact (an object affects the motion of another
object if and only if the two objects come into
contact), they do not expect human motion to be
constrained in this way. These findings provide
preliminary evidence diat infants have principled
expectations to guide their reasoning and learning
about human action.