Developments in young infants' reasoning about occluded objects

Aguiar, Andréa; Baillargeon, Renée

doi:10.1016/s0010-0285(02)00005-1

Cited by 134 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

131

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…They were more surprised by the first event than the second, indicating that 2½-montholds already know that the impossible event violates physical laws. Infants who are five to six months old react when an aperture object is wider than the aperture it is to be inserted into (Sitskoorn and Smitsman 1995;Aguiar and Baillargeon 2002), and 7½-month-olds react when the object is higher than the box in which it disappears (Hespos and Baillargeon 2001).…”

Section: Mental Rotation Perceiving Object In Different Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fitting objects into holes: On the development of spatial cognition skills.

Örnkloo¹,

Hofsten²

2007

Developmental Psychology

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The authors examined 14-to 26-month-old infants' understanding of the spatial relationships between objects and apertures in an object manipulation task. The task was to insert objects with various cross-sections (circular, square, rectangular, ellipsoid, and triangular) into fitting apertures. A successful solution required the infant to mentally rotate the object to be fit into the aperture and use that information to plan the action. The object was presented standing up in half of the trials; in the other half, it was lying down. The results showed that infants solved the problem consistently from age 22 months and that a successful solution was associated with appropriate preadjustments before the hand arrived with the block to the aperture. No sex differences were found.

show abstract

Section: Mental Rotation Perceiving Object In Different Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fitting objects into holes: On the development of spatial cognition skills.

Örnkloo¹,

Hofsten²

2007

Developmental Psychology

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…if the cover is lowered over the toy, infants categorize the event as a covering event; if the cover is lowered in front of the toy, they categorize it as an occlusion event). Infants then tap their knowledge of the event category selected, which lists the variables that have been identified as relevant for predicting outcomes in the category [38][39][40][41][42] (for a description of how variables are identified, see Refs [43,44]). A variable both calls infants' attention to a certain type of information in an event, and provides a causal rule for interpreting this information.…”

Section: A Three-system Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting impossible changes in infancy: a three-system account

Wang¹,

Baillargeon²

2008

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Can infants detect that an object has magically disappeared, broken apart or changed color while briefly hidden? Recent research suggests that infants detect some but not other 'impossible' changes; and that various contextual manipulations can induce infants to detect changes they would not otherwise detect. We present an account that includes three systems: a physicalreasoning, an object-tracking, and an object-representation system. What impossible changes infants detect depends on what object information is included in the physical-reasoning system; this information becomes subject to a principle of persistence, which states that objects can undergo no spontaneous or uncaused change. What contextual manipulations induce infants to detect impossible changes depends on complex interplays between the physical-reasoning system and the object-tracking and object-representation systems. Change violations and cognitive developmentThe study of change blindness -the inability to notice changes when they occur during a brief visual disruption -has a long history in the field of infant cognition, and encompasses two broad lines of research. In one, infants are presented with a series of static arrays, and investigators examine whether infants detect salient changes between arrays [1][2][3]. In the other, infants are presented with physical events in which objects become briefly hidden, and researchers ask whether infants notice 'impossible' changes, or change violations, that occur while the objects are out of sight [4][5][6]. In this review, we focus on this second line of research.Investigations of infants' ability to detect change violations have addressed several related questions. First, what change violations can infants detect when shown a single event involving few objects? For example, can infants detect that an object has magically disappeared, broken apart or changed color [7,8]? Second, can infants who fail to detect a change violation be induced to do so through contextual manipulations [9,10]? Third, how does infants' performance deteriorate under more challenging conditions: for example, when the event unfolds rapidly, when the number of objects in the event is increased or when multiple events are shown simultaneously [11,12]? The answers to these questions have proven remarkably intricate, and are helping to shed light on the various cognitive systems that underlie infants' responses of to events.In this review, we focus on the first two questions (see Box 1 for an overview of the third has helped us formulate an account of the physical-reasoning system of infants [13][14][15].Research on the second question -can infants be induced through contextual manipulations to detect change violations they do not spontaneously detect? -is leading us to explore possible links between the physical-reasoning system and two other systems suggested by findings in the adult and infant visual cognition literature: the object-tracking system [16][17][18], and another system we term the object-representation syst...

show abstract

“…Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2003;Casasola & Cohen, 2002;Casasola, Cohen, & Chiarello, 2003;Hespos & Baillargeon, 2001a;Luo & Baillargeon, 2005;McDonough, Choi, &Mandler, 2003;Wilcox & Chapa, 2002); for each category, infants gradually identify a series of variables that enables them to predict outcomes within the category more and more accurately over time (e.g. Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2002;Baillargeon, 1991;Dan, Omori, & Tomiyasu, 2000;Huettel & Needham, 2000;Kotovsky & Baillargeon, 1998;Sitskoorn & Smitsman, 1995;Wang, Kaufman, & Baillargeon, 2003;Wilcox, 1999; for recent reviews, see Baillargeon, 2002Baillargeon, , 2004Baillargeon & Wang, 2002). This variable knowledge determines what detailed information infants include in their physical representations.…”

Section: An Account Of Infants' Physical Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, (1) 2.5-month-old infants are surprised when an object disappears behind one occluder and reappears from behind another occluder without appearing in the gap between them (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 1999;Luo & Baillargeon, in press;Wilcox, Nadel, & Rosser, 1996); (2) 2.5-month-old infants are surprised when an object is lowered inside a container through its closed top (Hespos & Baillargeon, 2001b); and (3) 2.5-month-old infants are surprised when an object that has been lowered inside a container is revealed when the container is slid aside (Hespos & Baillargeon, 2001b). On the other hand, (1) infants less than 3.5 months of age are not surprised when a tall object becomes hidden behind a short occluder (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2002;Baillargeon & DeVos, 1991); (2) infants less than 7.5 months of age are not surprised when two objects, identical except for pattern (e.g. dots or stripes), emerge successively from behind a screen too narrow to hide them both (Wilcox, 1999;Wilcox & Chapa, 2004); (3) infants less than 7.5 months of age are not surprised when a tall object becomes hidden inside a short container (Hespos & Baillargeon, 2001a); (4) infants less than 9.5 months of age are not surprised when an object becomes hidden inside a transparent container (Luo & Baillargeon, 2005); and (5) infants less than 11.5 months of age are not surprised when two objects, identical except for color, emerge successively from behind a screen too narrow to hide them both (Wilcox, 1999;Wilcox & Chapa, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting continuity violations in infancy: a new account and new evidence from covering and tube events

2005

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent research on infants' responses to occlusion and containment events indicates that, although some violations of the continuity principle are detected at an early age e.g. Aguiar, A., & Baillargeon, R. (1999). 2.5-month-old infants' reasoning about when objects should and should not be occluded. The present research focused on events involving covers or tubes, and brought to light additional examples of early and late successes in infants' ability to detect continuity violations. In Experiment 1, 2.5-to 3-month-old infants were surprised (1) when a cover was lowered over an object, slid to the right, and lifted to reveal no object; and (2) when a cover was lowered over an object, slid behind the left half of a screen, lifted above the screen, moved to the right, lowered behind the right half of the screen, slid past the screen, and finally lifted to reveal the object. In Experiments 2 and 3, 9-and 11-month-old infants were not surprised when a short cover was lowered over a tall object until it became fully hidden; only 12-month-old infants detected this violation. Finally, in Experiment 4, 9-, 12-, and 13-month-old infants were not surprised when a tall object was lowered inside a short tube until it became fully hidden; only 14-month-old infants detected this violation. A new account of infants' physical reasoning attempts to make sense of all of these results. New research directions suggested by the account are also discussed.

show abstract

Developments in young infants' reasoning about occluded objects

Cited by 134 publications

References 52 publications

Fitting objects into holes: On the development of spatial cognition skills.

Fitting objects into holes: On the development of spatial cognition skills.

Detecting impossible changes in infancy: a three-system account

Detecting continuity violations in infancy: a new account and new evidence from covering and tube events

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About