When it helps to occlude and obscure : 6-month-olds' predictive tracking of moving toys

• What do infants know about hidden objects’? Previous research suggests that the answer depends on how the objects are hidden. For instance, infants appear to reach for toys in the dark (Clifton, Rochat, Litovsky, & Penis, 1991; Hood & Willatts, 1986) before they reach for toys occluded in the light. However, these experiments have not compared directly toys occluded in the light and by darkness. The current experiment tests infants under both conditions in the same paradigm. In addition, the experiment introduces a combined ccluderdarkness condition to test two distinct explanations for a possible advantage in the dark. First,  infants may have knowledge about hidden objects but cannot act on it for occluder-specific reasons (e.g., means-ends deficits, beliefs about the whether the object is accessible). Second, infants may have graded representations of occluded objects that can be more easily maintained in the face of global darkness than with the direct visual interference of an occluder. Counterintuitive results from the current experiment provide evidence for both representational and occluder-specific effects.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Psychology

psykologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)