Infants' reasoning about opaque and transparent occluders in an individuation task.

Full Abstract

There has been some debate about whether infants 10 months and younger can use featural information to individuate objects. The present research tested the hypothesis that negative results obtained with younger infants reflect limitations in information processing capacities rather than the inability to individuate objects based on featural differences. Infants aged 9.5 months saw one object (i.e. a ball) or two objects (i.e. a box and a ball) emerge successively to opposite sides of an opaque occluder. Infants then saw a single ball either behind a transparent occluder or without an occluder. Only the infants who saw the ball behind the transparent occluder correctly judged that the one-ball display was inconsistent with the box-ball sequence. These results suggest that:
(a) infants categorize events involving opaque and transparent occluders as the same kind of physical situation (i.e. occlusion) and (b) support the notion that infants are more likely to give evidence of object individuation when they need to reason about one kind of event (i.e. occlusion) than when they must retrieve and compare categorically distinct events (i.e. occlusion and no-occlusion).

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Author information

Author/s: Wilcox, Teresa (T); Chapa, Catherine (C);

Affiliation: Psychology Department, Texas A&M University, 230 Psychology Building, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA. tgw(-atsign-)psyc.tamu.edu

Grants: HD-36741 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Aug; vol 85 (issue 1) : pp B1-10

Dates: Created 2002/06/27; Completed 2002/09/06; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12086715, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cognition
Female
Humans

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