Décalage in infants' knowledge about occlusion and containment events: converging evidence from action tasks.
In the present research, 6-month-old infants consistently searched for a tall toy behind a tall as opposed to a short occluder. However, when the same toy was hidden inside a tall or a short container, only older, 7.5-month-old infants searched for the tall toy inside the tall container. These and control results (1) confirm previous violation-of-expectation (VOE) findings of a décalage in infants' reasoning about height information in occlusion and containment events; (2) cast doubt on the suggestion that VOE tasks overestimate infants' cognitive abilities; and (3) support recent proposals that infants use their physical knowledge to guide their actions when task demands do not overwhelm their limited processing resources.
Hespos
Susan J
SJ
Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Peabody College #512, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA. hespos@northwestern.edu
Baillargeon
Renée
R
D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception