Dissociating intuitive physics from intuitive psychology: Evidence from Williams syndrome

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Frederik S. Kamps, Emory University; Joshua B. Julian, University of Pennsylvania; Peter Battaglia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University; Nancy Kanwisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Daniel Dilks, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2017-11
• Publisher: Elsevier: 12 months
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.027
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Cognition
• ISSN: 0010-0277
• Volume: 168
• Start Page: 146
• End Page: 153
• Grant/Funding Information: The work was supported by Emory College (DD), NICHD grant T32HD071845 (FK), NIH grant EY013455 (NK), NINDS RO1 NS 050876 (BL) and the NSF Science and Technology Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CCF-1231216) (NK).
• Keywords: Social perception; Naive physics; Physical reasoning; Williams-Beuren syndrome (WS); Naive psychology
• Research Categories: Psychology, Cognitive

Abstract

Prior work suggests that our understanding of how things work (“intuitive physics”) and how people work (“intuitive psychology”) are distinct domains of human cognition. Here we directly test the dissociability of these two domains by investigating knowledge of intuitive physics and intuitive psychology in adults with Williams syndrome (WS) – a genetic developmental disorder characterized by severely impaired spatial cognition, but relatively spared social cognition. WS adults and mental-age matched (MA) controls completed an intuitive physics task and an intuitive psychology task. If intuitive physics is a distinct domain (from intuitive psychology), then we should observe differential impairment on the physics task for individuals with WS compared to MA controls. Indeed, adults with WS performed significantly worse on the intuitive physics than the intuitive psychology task, relative to controls. These results support the hypothesis that knowledge of the physical world can be disrupted independently from knowledge of the social world.