We investigated whether 6- and 7-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds, as well as adults, process object dimensions independent of or in interaction with one another in a perception and action task by adapting Ganel and Goodale's method for testing adults ("Nature", 2003, Vol. 426, pp. 664-667). In addition, we aimed to confirm Ganel and Goodale's…

Novelty seeking is viewed as adaptive, and novelty preferences in infancy predict cognitive performance into adulthood. Yet 7-month-olds prefer familiar stimuli to novel ones when searching for hidden objects, in contrast to their strong novelty preferences with visible objects (Shinskey & Munakata, 2005). According to a graded representations…

The present research examined whether infants as young as 6 months of age would consider what objects a human agent could perceive when interpreting her actions on the objects. In two experiments, the infants took the agent's actions of repeatedly reaching for and grasping one of two possible objects as suggesting her preference for that object…

This article presents a review of the literature on object permanence with an emphasis on research on children with severe disabilities. Object permanence is the realisation that objects continue to exist in time and place even when they are no longer visible. This understanding is achieved across Stages IV-VI of Piaget's Sensorimotor Period.…

Memory for feature binding comprises a key ingredient in coherent object representations. Previous studies have been equivocal about human capacity for objects in the visual working memory. To evaluate memory for feature binding, a type identification paradigm was devised and used with a multiple-object permanence tracking task. Using objects…

In a series of five experiments, we investigated whether visual tracking mechanisms utilize prediction when recovering multiple reappearing objects. When all objects abruptly disappeared and reappeared mid-trajectory, it was found that (a) subjects tracked better when objects reappeared at their loci of disappearance than when they reappeared in…

One of the defining cognitive characteristics of the chromosome 22q deletion syndrome (DS22q11.2) is visuospatial processing impairments. The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend the specific attentional profile of children with this disorder using both an object-based attention task and an inhibition of return task. A group of…

A theory is presented to explain the perception of partially occluded objects and illusory figures, from both static and kinematic information, in a unified framework. This detailed theory of unit formation accounts for most cases of boundary perception in the absence of local physical specification. (SLD)

Recent research indicates that by 4.5 months, infants use shape and size information as the basis for individuating objects but that it is not until 11.5 months that they use color information for this purpose. The present experiments investigated the extent to which infants' sensitivity to color information could be increased through select…

If after teaching a label for 1 object, a speaker does not name a nearby object, 3-year-olds tend to reject the label for the nearby object (W.E. Merriman, J.M. Marazita, L.H. Jarvis, J.A. Evey-Burkey, and M. Biggins, 1995a). In Studies 1 (5-year-olds) and 3 (3-year-olds), this effect depended on object similarity. In Study 2, when a speaker used…

The SeLective Attention Model (SLAM) performs visual selective attention tasks and demonstrates that object selection and attribute selection are both necessary and sufficient for visual selection. The SLAM is described, particularly with regard to its ability to represent an individual subject performing filtering tasks. (TJH)

When an object moves behind an occluder and re-emerges, 4-month-old infants perceive trajectory continuity only when the occluder is narrow, raising the question of whether time or distance out of sight is the important constraining variable. One hundred and forty 4-month-olds were tested in five experiments aimed to disambiguate time and distance…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate six-month-old infants' recognition memory for the shape of an object following unimodal (visual) and bimodal (visual and haptic) familiarization. Visual recognition memory was evident only when the conditions of familiarization and testing were identical. Two possible explanations are presented and…

Eight experiments were conducted to examine 3- and 3.5-month-old infants' responses to occlusion events. The results revealed two developments, one in infants' knowledge of when objects should and should not be occluded and the other in infants' ability to posit additional objects to make sense of events that would otherwise violate their…

Examines perceptions of adults compared with preschool children in assuming object permanence or discontinuity of existence when an object is removed from their immediate perceptual field. Results showed that a belief in the possibility of the discontinuity of material objects is not unique to the minds of preschool children but can also be…