Perseveration and Problem Solving in Infancy

Early limits on the verbal updating of an object’s location

“…Despite being told about an object's new location, 23-month-olds often perseverate to the object's prior location. This finding shows that the difficulties faced by preverbal infants in searching at an object's most recent location-that is, the classic A-not-B error (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2000;Diamond, 1985;Harris, 1973;Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999;Marcovitch & Zelazo, 2009)-reemerge when the information about the object's new location is provided via language rather than direct observation.…”

The role of perceptual similarity of the task environments in children’s perseverative responding

“…Given the current findings, the most likely candidate to provide a possible mechanism for the observed effects involves some form of novelty effect, with novelty in this case leading to the better allocation of attention and cognitive resources to a task under situations that are perceived as more novel (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2000). Aguiar and Baillargeon (2000) suggested that when children are faced with a problem, their initial analysis is aimed at categorizing the problem as either familiar or novel.…”

“…Aguiar and Baillargeon (2000) suggested that when children are faced with a problem, their initial analysis is aimed at categorizing the problem as either familiar or novel. If children believe the problem to be novel, they perform a further analysis of the problem in order to identify the solution.…”

Décalage in infants' knowledge about occlusion and containment events: Converging evidence from action tasks

“…The processing-load account can explain a wide array of findings in search, support, and other action tasks: for example, why infants are more likely to retrieve an object hidden behind a barrier when they can do so by reaching as opposed to crawling around the barrier (Lockman, 1984); why infants are more likely to search for an object hidden by turning off the room lights than for an object hidden under a cloth (Goubet & Clifton, 1998;Hood & Willatts, 1986); why infants are more likely to find an object hidden in one of two locations when searching visually than manually (Hofstadter & Reznick, 1996); why infants are more likely to remove a transparent than an opaque curtain or screen to retrieve an object behind it (Shinskey, Bogartz, & Poirier, 2000;Shinskey & Munakata, 2001); and why infants are more likely to retrieve an object on the far end of a support when they believe the object is attached to, rather than separate from, the support (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2000). In each case, success is more likely when overall task demands are reduced, either because the actions are easier to plan and execute, or because the objects are easier to represent.…”