Is early reasoning about an agent's knowledge best characterized by a mentalistic stance, a teleological stance, or both? In this research, 5-month-old infants (N = 64, 50% female, 83% White) saw a novel eyeless agent consistently approach object-A as opposed to object-B. Although infants could always see both objects, a screen separated object-B…

Both human infants and adult non-human primates share the capacity to track small numbers of objects across time and occlusion. The question now facing developmental and comparative psychologists is whether similar mechanisms give rise to this capacity across the two populations. Here, we explore whether non-human primates' object tracking…

The balance between the preservation of early cognitive functions and serious transformations on these functions shifts across time. Piaget's writings, which favored transformations, are being replaced by writings that emphasize continuities between select cognitive functions of infants and older children. The claim that young infants possess…

The present research investigated whether 13.5-month-old infants would attribute to an actor a disposition to perform a recurring action, and would then use this information to predict which of two new objects--one that could be used to perform the action and one that could not--the actor would grasp next. During familiarization, the infants…

Investigates whether 6- to 12-month-old infants' exposure to the successful search behavior of a sibling in two object-concept tasks would enhance infants' subsequent performance on these tasks. (HOD)