L4: C.D Mental Representations and Object Permanence Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is the Sensorimotor Stage according to Piaget?
It is a stage where infants live in a ‘here and now’ world, unable to form mental representations of objects or events not currently visible.
What is Object Permanence?
It is the understanding that objects continue to exist when hidden, regardless of action. It is a key milestone indicating mental representation.
What was Piaget’s view on Object Permanence before 8 months?
‘Out of sight = out of mind.’ Infants do not understand that objects continue to exist when they cannot see them.
What evidence challenges Piaget’s timeline for Object Permanence?
The Violation of Expectation Paradigm suggests that infants have mental expectations earlier than Piaget claimed.
What was the Ramp Study by Baillargeon (1986)?
In this study, 4-6 month-olds watched a car roll behind a screen with a box behind it and looked longer when the car appeared to ‘pass through’ the box, indicating they understood the box still existed.
What was the main finding of the Draw bridge study by Ballargeon (1985)?
5-month-olds showed longer looking times at impossible events, indicating object permanence and understanding of solidity.
What did infants understand about solid objects at 2 months according to Spelle et al (1492)?
Infants understood that solid objects cannot pass through each other.
What was the focus of Lign’s Counting study (1992)?
5-month-olds looked longer at impossible arithmetic outcomes when objects were added or removed behind a screen.
What does the study ‘Reaching in the Dark’ by Hood & Willots (1986) demonstrate?
Infants reached for a toy they had previously seen, even in the dark, indicating memory and representation of unseen objects.
What is the A - not-B Error?
Infants search in the wrong location (A) even after watching the object move to (B).
Piaget claimed this meant no object permanence.
What are the modern explanations for the A - not-B Error?
- Attention: Infants look at the correct location but still reach incorrectly.
- Memory: Infants are surprised by incorrect reaching.
- Inhibition: Likely cause due to underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, leading to difficulty in inhibiting habitual responses.
Infants know where the object is but can’t resist reaching where it was before.
What is Delayed Imitation according to Piaget?
It emerges between 6-21 months and requires storing a mental representation to recall and reproduce an action.
What evidence supports Delayed Imitation?
- Meltzoff (1985): 14+ months old could imitate actions after a 24-hour delay.
- Berr et al. (1996): 6-month-olds showed partial imitations of puppet actions after 1 hour.
As infants age, imitation becomes more accurate and lasts longer (Hebert & Hayne 2000).
What did the author not believe in until 8 months?
Intentional planning.
What evidence of planning did Williams (1984, 1997) provide?
9-10 month-olds completed 2-3 step tasks to retrieve a toy.
Infants showed intentional behavior only when the toy was present.
When do infants plan actions according to the evidence?
When the goal is motivating and the context is familiar.
What was insightful about Piaget’s sequencing?
His timeline underestimated infants’ abilities.
What abilities emerge much earlier than Piaget proposed?
Object permanence, imitation, and planning.
Can infants mentally represent the world?
Yes, even if they don’t always show it behaviorally.
