Explores development of cognitive representation in 20 infants 12 to 24 months of age with regard to (l) their understanding of agency in symbolic play (agent use), (2) recognition of their own mirror image, and (3) object permanence. Results were generally consistent with developmental sequences predicted by Fischer's Skill Theory for agent use…

The emerging ability to represent an oscillating moving object over occlusions was studied in 7-21-week-old infants. The object moved at 0.25 Hz and was either occluded at the center of the trajectory (for 0.3 s) or at one turning point (for 0.7 s). Each trial lasted for 20 s. Both eye and head movements were measured. By using two kinds of…

Cognition is a general term describing the mental capacities of an animal, and often includes the ability to categorize, remember, and communicate about objects in the environment. Numerous regions of the telencephalon (cerebral cortex and limbic system) are responsible for these cognitive functions. Although many researchers have used traditional…

This study tested Piaget's explanation of infants' perseverative error in manual search by comparing searches when the object was (1) hidden, (2) covered but visible, and (3) uncovered. Errors occurred under all three conditions, with conflict at a maximum when the object was hidden. (Author/JMB)

A theory is presented to explain the perception of partially occluded objects and illusory figures, from both static and kinematic information, in a unified framework. This detailed theory of unit formation accounts for most cases of boundary perception in the absence of local physical specification. (SLD)

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…

In a series of five experiments, we investigated whether visual tracking mechanisms utilize prediction when recovering multiple reappearing objects. When all objects abruptly disappeared and reappeared mid-trajectory, it was found that (a) subjects tracked better when objects reappeared at their loci of disappearance than when they reappeared in…

The question of whether object recognition is orientation-invariant or orientation-dependent was investigated using a repetition blindness (RB) paradigm. In RB, the second occurrence of a repeated stimulus is less likely to be reported, compared to the occurrence of a different stimulus, if it occurs within a short time of the first presentation.…

Making sense of the visual world requires keeping track of objects as the same persisting individuals over time and occlusion. Here we implement a new paradigm using 10-month-old infants to explore the processes and representations that support this ability in two ways. First, we demonstrate that persisting object representations can be maintained…

The negative compatibility effect (NCE) is the surprising result that visual targets that follow a brief prime stimulus and a mask can be identified more rapidly when they are opposite rather than identical to the prime. In a recent article in this journal, S. T. Klapp and L. B. Hinkley (2002) proposed that this reflected a competition between…

If after teaching a label for 1 object, a speaker does not name a nearby object, 3-year-olds tend to reject the label for the nearby object (W.E. Merriman, J.M. Marazita, L.H. Jarvis, J.A. Evey-Burkey, and M. Biggins, 1995a). In Studies 1 (5-year-olds) and 3 (3-year-olds), this effect depended on object similarity. In Study 2, when a speaker used…

In two experiments on very young children's response to the orientation of pictures and objects, 18-, 24- and 30-month-old children showed no preference for upright pictures over inverted ones. More importantly, we found that children in all three age groups were equally accurate and equally fast at identifying depicted objects regardless of…

One of the defining cognitive characteristics of the chromosome 22q deletion syndrome (DS22q11.2) is visuospatial processing impairments. The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend the specific attentional profile of children with this disorder using both an object-based attention task and an inhibition of return task. A group of…

An important characteristic of mature spatial cognition is the ability to encode spatial locations in terms of relations among landmarks as well as in terms of vectors that include distance and direction. In this study, we examined children's use of the relation "middle" to code the location of a hidden toy, using a procedure adapted…

Three experiments test object permanenece in 3 1/2- and 4 1/2-month-old infants, and use an impossible-possible-habituation event format. The 4 1/2-month-olds, and the 3 1/2-month-olds who were fast habituators, look reliably longer at the impossible than at the possible event. Results seriously question Piaget's (1954) claims regarding the age at…