What are the origins of object permanence? Despite widespread interest in this question, methodological barriers have prevented detailed analysis of how experience shapes the development of object permanence in newborn organisms. Here, we introduce an automated controlled-rearing method for studying the emergence of object permanence in strictly…

How long does it take for a newborn to recognize an object? Adults can recognize objects rapidly, but measuring object recognition speed in newborns has not previously been possible. Here we introduce an automated controlled-rearing method for measuring the speed of newborn object recognition in controlled visual worlds. We raised newborn chicks…

To locate objects in the environment, animals and humans use visual and nonvisual information. We were interested in children's ability to relocate an object on the basis of self-motion and local and distal color cues for orientation. Five- to 9-year-old children were tested on an object location memory task in which, between presentation and…

We investigated whether great apes, like human infants, monkeys and dogs, are subject to a strong gravity bias when tested with the tubes task, and--in case of mastery--what the source of competence on the tubes task is. We presented 22 apes with three versions of the tubes task, in which an object is dropped down a tube connected to one of three…

Finding hidden objects in space is a fundamental ability that has received considerable research attention from both a developmental and a comparative perspective. Tracking the rotational displacements of containers and hidden objects is a particularly challenging task. This study investigated the ability of 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children and…

Developmental research suggests that whereas very young infants individuate objects purely on spatiotemporal grounds, from (at latest) around 1 year of age children are capable of individuating objects according to the kind they belong to and the properties they instantiate. As the latter ability has been found to correlate with language, some…

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…

The use of gaze shifts as social cues has various evolutionary advantages. To investigate the developmental processes of this ability, we conducted an object-choice task by using longitudinal methods with infant chimpanzees tested from 8 months old until 3 years old. The experimenter used one of six gestures towards a cup concealing food; tapping,…

In this article, the authors present a project that gives students examples of basic skills that many vertebrate species develop as they grow and function in their ecosystem. These activities involve information gathering about surroundings, learning how to use objects, and tracking and searching skills. Different vertebrate species may acquire…

Episodic memory in humans is the conscious recollection of a past event. Animal models of episodic-like memory assess the memory for "what" happened, "where" it happened, and either "when" it happened, or in "which" context it happened, although recollection on such tasks is often difficult to measure. Here we present the first evidence of…

We directly compared chimpanzee infants and human infants for categorical representations of three global-like categories (mammals, furniture and vehicles), using the familiarization-novelty preference technique. Neither species received any training during the experiments. We used the time that participants spent looking at the stimulus object…

Chimpanzees ("Pan troglodytes") and bonobos ("Pan paniscus") (Study 1) and 18- and 24-month-old human children (Study 2) participated in a novel communicative task. A human experimenter (E) hid food or a toy in one of two opaque containers before gesturing towards the reward's location in one of two ways. In the Informing condition, she attempted…