title: Detecting impossible changes in infancy: a three-system account.
abstract: Can infants detect that an object has magically disappeared, broken apart or changed color while briefly hidden? Recent research suggests that infants detect some but not other 'impossible' changes; and that various contextual manipulations can induce infants to detect changes they would not otherwise detect. We present an account that includes three systems: a physical-reasoning, an object-tracking, and an object-representation system. What impossible changes infants detect depends on what object information is included in the physical-reasoning system; this information becomes subject to a principle of persistence, which states that objects can undergo no spontaneous or uncaused change. What contextual manipulations induce infants to detect impossible changes depends on complex interplays between the physical-reasoning system and the object-tracking and object-representation systems.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. suhua@ucsc.edu
authors: Su-hua
authors: SH
authors: Wang
authors: Renée
authors: R
authors: Baillargeon
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D002666:Psychology, Child; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013850:Thinking