Scales for object permanence and spatial relationships were administered to 98 severely and profoundly mentally retarded children (mean age 13 years) on three occasions, 6 months apart. Differences in the difficulty of the items were quite stable, but their order of difficulty differed appreciably from that for nonretarded infants. (Author/SB)

Twenty-four- and 30-month-old children were presented with a picture that showed the location of a hidden toy and were then asked to find the toy. The 30-month olds, but not the 24-month-olds, were successful in retrieving the toy. Concludes that 24-month olds did not interpret the pictures as representations of reality. (BC)

Investigated the possibility that previous reports of a relation between locomotor status and stage-4 object permanence performance could be generalized to performance on an object localization task. Findings suggest that the effects of locomotor experience on infants' search performance are quite specific and mediated by a variety of factors that…

The present study explored the dimensionality of cognition at 12 months by factor analyzing data from a large cohort of preterm and full-term infants (N=182). Two analyses were done. In the first, using only measures used earlier, when the infants were 7 months of age, the same three factors emerged at 12 months as at the earlier age-namely,…

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 this preliminary study we investigate gender differences in object location memory. Our purpose is to extend the results about object location memory obtained in laboratory settings to a real 3-D environment and to further distinguish the specific components involved in this kind of memory by considering the strategies adopted to perform the…

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…

Preferential-looking studies suggest that by 2 months of age, infants may have knowledge about some object properties, such as solidity. Manual search studies of toddlers examining these same concepts, however, have failed to provide evidence for the same understanding. Investigators have recently attempted to reconcile this disparity but failed…

A hypothesized developmental sequence of agent use in pretending was tested in 36 infants between 14 and 24 months of age and was compared with the development of object permanence. (JMB)

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…

Changes in children's categorization behavior between 15 and 21 months of age and the relation of these changes to developments in language, object permanence, and means-end understanding are reported. (PCB)

The theory proposed (recognition-by-components) hypothesizes the perceptual recognition of objects to be a process in which the image of the input is segmented at regions of deep concavity into an arrangement of simple geometric components. Experiments on the perception of briefly presented pictures support the theory. (Author/LMO)

Purpose of the study was to determine whether a name for a toy affects an infant's attentional preference for a toy and whether this process is related to the infant's concept of subject permanence. (Authors)

Examined the role of perceptual-motor development in a typical Stage IV task. The performance of ten infants was compared on a Stage IV object permanence task when a cloth cover was used and when a small card cover was used. (JMB)