--- abstract: 'Determining whether or not an entity is capable of acting intentionally is a fundamental cognitive skill that emerges in the first year of infancy, and the inability to act is a key aspect distinguishing dead from living things. Though young children’s understanding of death is generally thought to be poor, an understanding of death as the permanent cessation of agency might develop early in childhood. This study tested the cessation-of-agency hypothesis cross-culturally, by examining the differences between children’s judgments about sleeping and dead animals. The results showed that children understand that death entails the permanent cessation of the ability to act by age 4 in two different cultures. This is consistent with a view that those distinctions that are most crucial for adaptive decision-making are the ones that develop earliest.' altloc: - http://www-abc.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/users/barrett/intentionalaction.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: 2001 conference: 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society confloc: Edinburgh contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Barrett given: H. Clark honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Behne given: Tanya honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2001 date_type: published datestamp: 2001-08-07 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/17/30 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 1730 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/1730/3/intentionalaction.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: inpress 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: 'evolutionary psychology, cognitive development, agency, death' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:46 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: | Barrett, H.C. (1999). Human cognitive adaptations to predators and prey. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. UMI Microform number 9986870. Barrett, H.C., Cosmides, L., and Tooby, J. (in prep). Children’s understanding of predator-prey interactions and death. Gergely, G., Nádasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Biró, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165-193 Leslie, A. M. (1994). ToMM, ToBy, and agency: Core architecture and domain specificity. In L. A. Hirschfeld & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Slaughter, V., Jaakkola, R., & Carey, S. (1999). Constructing a coherent theory: Children's biological understanding of life and death. In M. Siegal & C. Peterson (Eds.), Children's understanding of biology and health. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:39:56 subjects: - dev-psy - evol-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Understanding death as the cessation of intentional action: A cross-cultural developmental study' type: confposter userid: 1711 volume: ~