Object Permanence - Contradicting Evidence

Contradicting Evidence

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 that objects exist even when out of sight. Bower demonstrated object permanence in 3-month-olds. This goes against Piaget's coordination of secondary circular reactions stage because infants aren't supposed to understand that a completely hidden object until they are eight to twelve months old. The two studies below demonstrate this idea.

The first study 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. Also in the 1991 study the researchers used an experiment involving two differently sized carrots (one tall and one short) in order to test the infants response when the carrots would be moved behind a short wall. The wall was specifically designed to make the short carrot disappear, as well as tested the infants for habituation patterns on the disappearance of the tall carrot behind the wall (impossible event). Infants as young as 3½ months displayed greater stimulation toward the impossible event and much more habituation at the possible event. This indicated that they may have been surprised by the impossible event, which suggested they remembered not only that the toy mouse still existed (object permanence) but also its location. The same was true of the tall carrot in the second experiment. This research suggests that infants understand more about objects earlier than Piaget proposed.

There are primarily four challenges to Piaget's framework:

1. Whether or not infants without disabilities actually demonstrate object permanence earlier than Piaget claimed.
2. There is disagreement about the relative levels of difficulty posed by the use of various types of covers and by different object positions.
3. Controversy concerns whether or not object permanence can be achieved or measured without the motor acts that Piaget regarded as essential.
4. The nature of inferences that can be made from the A-not-B error has been challenged. Studies that have contributed to this discussion have examined the contribution of memory limitations, difficulty with spatial localisation, and difficulty in inhibiting the motor act of reaching to location A on the A-not-B error.

One criticism of Piaget's theory is that culture and education exert stronger influences on a child's development than Piaget maintained. These factors depend on how much practice their culture provides in developmental processes, such as conversational skills.