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ERIC Number: EJ724172
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2005-Sep
Pages: 9
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
Young Infants' Expectations about Hidden Objects
Ruffman, Ted; Slade, Lance; Redman, Jessica
Cognition, v97 n2 pB35-B43 Sep 2005
Infants aged 3-5 months (mean of approximately 4 months) were given a novel anticipatory looking task to test object permanence understanding. They were trained to expect an experimenter to retrieve an object from behind a transparent screen upon hearing a cue (''Doors up, here comes the hand''). The experimenter then hid the object behind one of two opaque screens and after either 2 or 8s gave the ''doors up'' cue. Infants looked to the correct location after the two-second delay, but not after the eight-second delay. This indicates a brief memory that the object is present behind the occluder. The study provides converging evidence that infants grasp object permanence by a young age. The novel anticipatory looking paradigm helps rule out counter-explanations applied to violation-of-expectation tasks.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A