Object permanence in child and chimpanzee

Object Permanence 1

Object permanence in five-month-old infants.

A new method was devised to test object permanence in young infants. Fivemonth-old infants were habituated to a screen that moved back and forth through a 180-degree arc, in the manner of a drawbridge. After infants reached habituation, a box was centered behind the screen. Infants were shown two test events: a possible event and an impossible event. In the possible event, the screen stopped wh...

Object permanence in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).

A series of 9 search tasks corresponding to the Piagetian Stages 3-6 of object permanence were administered to 11 common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). Success rates varied strongly among tasks and marmosets, but the performances of most subjects were above chance level on the majority of tasks of visible and invisible displacements. Although up to 24 trials were administered in the tests, sub...

Object Permanence in Adult Cats (Felis catus)

Human analog tests of object permanence were administered to adult cats in order to assess as accurately as possible their developmental level in this particular cognitive capacity and to analyze their search behavior in situations in which an object has disappeared. Experiment 1 compared two groups, one that received the tests in their usual order of presentation and another that received firs...

Object permanence in young infants: further evidence.

Recent evidence suggests that 4.5- and even 3.5-month-old infants realize that objects continue to exist when hidden. The goal of the present experiments was to obtain converging evidence of object permanence in young infants. Experiments were conducted using paradigms previously used to demonstrate object permanence in 5.5-month-old infants and 6.5-month-old infants. In one experiment, 3.5-mon...