Recent work suggests that infants rely on mechanisms of object-based attention and short-term memory to represent small numbers of objects. Such work shows that infants discriminate arrays containing 1, 2, or 3 objects, but fail with arrays greater than 3 [Feigenson, L., & Carey, S. (2003). Tracking individuals via object-files: Evidence from…

The present research investigated whether 13.5-month-old infants would attribute to an actor a disposition to perform a recurring action, and would then use this information to predict which of two new objects--one that could be used to perform the action and one that could not--the actor would grasp next. During familiarization, the infants…

When an object moves behind an occluder and re-emerges, 4-month-old infants perceive trajectory continuity only when the occluder is narrow, raising the question of whether time or distance out of sight is the important constraining variable. One hundred and forty 4-month-olds were tested in five experiments aimed to disambiguate time and distance…

We introduce computer-based methodologies for investigating object identification in 3- to 5-year-old children. In two experiments, preschool children and adults indicated when they could identify degraded pictures of common objects as those pictures either gradually improved or degraded in clarity. Clarity transformations were implemented in four…

Research over the past 20 years has revealed that even very young infants possess expectations about physical events, and that these expectations undergo significant developments during the first year of life. In this article, I first review some of this research, focusing on infants' expectations about occlusion, containment, and covering events,…

A study was conducted to investigate the degree to which both object familiarity and motivational factors influence infants' search behavior in an object permanence test. Infants' search behavior for an unfamiliar test object was compared with search behavior for (a) an experientially familiar object that each infant had played with daily for a…

Investigates whether 6- to 12-month-old infants' exposure to the successful search behavior of a sibling in two object-concept tasks would enhance infants' subsequent performance on these tasks. (HOD)

Infants ranging in age from six months to eight months were shown repeated instances of real object movement-disappearance-reappearance. Results suggest that the key changes in early cognitive development rest primarily upon the infant's gradual adaptation of old responses through encounters with new events--rather than upon the acquisition of…

Experiment one tested 9- and 16-month-old children on a modification of Piaget's Stage IV object permanence task, examining infants' use of information from previous experiences with an object and from a recent hiding to locate a hidden object. In experiment two, two-, two-and-a-half-, and four-year-old children additionally received verbal…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate six-month-old infants' recognition memory for the shape of an object following unimodal (visual) and bimodal (visual and haptic) familiarization. Visual recognition memory was evident only when the conditions of familiarization and testing were identical. Two possible explanations are presented and…

Low birth weight preterm multiple birth infants do lag behind initially in mental and motor development, but they are equal in development with normal peers by the age of two. It was inferred that the multiple caretaking situation did not interfere with the infants' specific attachment to their mothers. (Author/RH)

Premature infants with subependymal or intraventricular hemorrhage took longer to habituate on a habituation task, and scored lower on a measure of mental development, than did other premature infants or full-term infants. Both groups of premature infants were less successful than full-term infants on an object permanence task. (BC)

Infants who were in darkness were presented with objects that made sounds. Objects were within reach and out of reach. Infants reached into the target area more often when the object was in reach than when the object was beyond reach. Infants reached correctly in the dark for objects placed off midline. (BC)

Examines the ability of infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object. Subjects were infants ranging from an average of four months to eight months old. Three experiments, with the last one as control, were carried out. Concludes that infants show some rudimentary mental rotation from four months of age. (MOK)

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…