Young infants' expectations about hidden objects.
Infants aged 3-5 months (mean of approximately 4 months) were given a novel anticipatory looking task to test object permanence understanding. They were trained to expect an experimenter to retrieve an object from behind a transparent screen upon hearing a cue ("Doors up, here comes the hand"). The experimenter then hid the object behind one of two opaque screens and after either 2 or 8s gave the "doors up" cue. Infants looked to the correct location after the two-second delay, but not after the eight-second delay. This indicates a brief memory that the object is present behind the occluder. The study provides converging evidence that infants grasp object permanence by a young age. The novel anticipatory looking paradigm helps rule out counter-explanations applied to violation-of-expectation tasks.
Ruffman
Ted
T
Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9QG, UK. tedr@psy.otago.ac.nz
Slade
Lance
L
Redman
Jessica
J
D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D008297:Male; D014743:Videotape Recording; D014796:Visual Perception