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03:56

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Young infants' expectations about hidden objects

Ted Ruffman1, Lance Slade, Jessica Redman

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9QG, UK. tedr@psy.otago.ac.nz

Cognition
|October 18, 2005
PubMed

Insights

Infants aged 4 months demonstrate object permanence, remembering hidden items for brief periods. This study used a novel anticipatory looking task to assess infant cognitive development.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Infant Cognition

Background:

  • Object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist when not perceived, is a cornerstone of cognitive development.
  • Previous research has utilized various paradigms, such as violation-of-expectation tasks, to study infant object permanence.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate object permanence understanding in 3-5-month-old infants using a novel anticipatory looking task.
  • To assess the duration of object memory in early infancy.

Main Methods:

  • A novel anticipatory looking paradigm was employed with infants aged 3-5 months.
  • Infants were trained to anticipate an object's appearance and then observed after delays of 2 or 8 seconds following object occlusion.

Main Results:

  • Infants successfully located the object after a 2-second delay.
  • Object localization failed after an 8-second delay, suggesting a brief memory trace.

Conclusions:

  • Infants aged 3-5 months possess a rudimentary understanding of object permanence.
  • The anticipatory looking paradigm offers a valuable tool for studying infant cognition, mitigating confounds present in other methods.

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