Does causal action facilitate causal perception in infants younger than 6 months of age?

Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6(1/4) months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 41/2-month-olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non-sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action but not those without this causal action experience perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 41/2-month-olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.