Perception of Object Persistence: The Origins of Object Permanence in Infancy

Abstract

Abstract A dominant account of object knowledge in infancy is based on the assumption that infants possess innate core knowledge of objects through which they reason about events and look longer at those that violate their expectations on the basis of this knowledge. In this article, we propose a perceptual model in which younger infants’ perception of object persistence is subject to greater perceptual constraints compared with infants a few months older, and in which young infants require a combination of cues to perceive object persistence across occlusion. Young infants perceive object persistence under limited conditions and over the early months, perception of persistence becomes more robust. The same analysis may be applied to cases in which stationary objects are occluded, including tasks assessing infants’ numerical competence. We argue that these perceptual developments within the first 6 months likely underpin the later development of cognitive principles, including object permanence.