This study examined two alternative interpretations of violation-of-expectation findings that young infants can represent hidden objects. Findings indicated that 5-month-olds succeeded in reasoning about the interaction of a visible and a hidden object even though the 2 objects were never simultaneously visible and a 3- or 4-minute delay preceded…

Maintains that Muller and Overton (1998) misrepresent her theory of infant concept formation in infancy, makes corrections to their representation, and notes that her theory was developed in part because of the lack of detailed mechanisms in Piaget's theory to account for concept formation. Argues that Muller and Overton's proposed alternative…

Infants' abilities to identify objects based on their perceptual features develop gradually during the first year and possibly beyond. Earlier we reported [Kaldy, Z., & Leslie, A. M. (2003). Identification of objects in 9-month-old infants: Integrating "what" and "where" information. Developmental Science, 6, 360-373] that infants at 9 months of…

Four experiments examined 8- to 12-month olds on search and nonsearch A not B tasks, a one-location task, and control tasks. Results indicated memory for where object was hidden and expectations of where it should be found. The effect occurred at delays at which infants made the A not B error when searching, and at a longer 15-second delay.…

Examines evidence that the research community studying infants' object concept and the community concerned with adult object-based attention have been studying the same natural kind. Maintains that the discovery that the object representations of young infants are the same as the object files of mid-level visual cognition has implications for both…

Prior to considering the ability of infants to think, this discussion attempts to dispel prevalent myths about babies' thought processes. The fact that infants do not intentionally manipulate their parents; are not identical; are not simply hedonistic seekers of bodily pleasures; and are not passive, disorganized beings needing training into…