Saturday, April 20, 2013

What research evidence is there that object permenence doesn't develop....?

Q. ...until the final sub-stage of the sensori-motor stage of cognitive development, internal representation? Just like Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development states? All I can find is research evidence saying that object permenence is present in children before reaching the final sub-stage.

A. Piaget used to make objects disappear under a cloth and see how children responded. If they were distressed, he assumed this was because the children thought the object no longer existed. Later experiments were more sophisticated. One study that focused on object permanence[5] showed infants a toy car that moved down an inclined track, disappeared behind a screen, and then reemerged at the other end, still on the track. The researchers created a "possible event" where a toy mouse was placed behind the tracks but was hidden by the screen as the car rolled by. Then, researchers created an "impossible event." In this situation, the toy mouse was placed on the tracks but was secretly removed after the screen was lowered so that the car seemed to go through the mouse. Infants as young as 3 1/2 months of age looked longer at the impossible event than at the possible event. This indicated that they were surprised by the impossible event, which suggested that they remembered not only that the toy mouse still existed (object permanence) but also its location. This research suggests that infants understand more about objects earlier than Piaget proposed.


What do you think about infant toys in reference to developmental psychology? ?
Q. Based on sensory, cognitive, or social development? (Doing research and needing detailed psychology input/answers)

A. Hi There,

Here is a great toy site that has everything classified by age & development, and talks about specific toys.

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=81139&U=272547&M=12666

It might help your research.

Jessica


Explain what object permanence is, how it is tested in infancy, and when it develops?
Q. Scientifically/Psychologically speaking.

A. "Object permanence is the term used to describe the awareness that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible.

Jean Piaget conducted experiments with infants which led him to conclude that this awareness was typically achieved at eight to nine months of age, during the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development. Such experiments consisted of behavioral tests with infant subjects. The infant would be shown a desirable object or toy, for example, and the toy would then be covered by a blanket or otherwise obscured from view while the infant was watching. Some of the infant subjects would immediately exhibit signs of confusion or dismay. Piaget interpreted these behavioral signs as evidence of a belief that the object had somehow 'vanished' or simply ceased to exist.

Piaget concluded that some infants were too young to understand object permanence, which would tend to explain why they do not cry when their mothers were gone ("out of sight, out of mind").[1] A lack of object permanence can lead to A-not-B errors, where children reach for a thing at a place where it should not be.

In more recent years, the original Piagetian object permanence account has been challenged by a series of infant studies suggesting that much younger infants do have a clear sense of objects persisting when out of sight. One example of an experiment that contradicts the Piagetian perceptions on this is the Bower and Wishart 1972 experiment where a child still groped for a teddy bear, even in total darkness. The inconsistencies in the experimental results and the underlying hypotheses may hinge on the mechanism used to obscure the test objects. For example, infants may simply have a better general understanding of the obscuring effects caused by changes in light.

Studies using the habituation method from the Baillargeon lab have shown that infants as young as 3 months know that an object continues to exist behind a screen even if they cannot demonstrate their knowledge in their behavior."





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