Origins of Object Concepts

当我们环顾世界时，我们看到的是彼此分离的物体，每个物体都有独特的大小、形状、表面图案和距离。我们感知连贯物体的能力克服了视觉系统的不完整输入，而视觉系统实际上是在空间和时间上碎片化的。也就是说，我们看到的大多数物体都部分地被其他更近的物体遮挡住了，当它们移动或我们移动时，它们可能会进入或离开我们的视线。常识性的“客体持久性”概念，即客体在远离直接感知接触时仍然存在的知识，是这种体验的核心。长期以来，儿童客体概念的起源一直是哲学家和研究人员感兴趣的问题。最值得注意的是，著名儿童心理学家皮亚杰（Piaget）的开创性研究提供了证据，证明只有在处理和接触物体的几个月经验之后，物体概念才会发展。最近，一些研究人员对皮亚杰的解释提出了质疑，理由是它过于依赖于作为客体概念索引的触及。对婴儿来说，接触可能很困难，而且可能低估了“真实的”物体知识。相反，婴儿的客体概念被认为根植于先天的知识结构，比如“客体连续性”，即理解一个被遮挡的客体，在视线之外仍能保持其存在、位置或轨迹。这些概念被认为是在使用观察时间方法时揭示出来的，当一个事件被呈现给婴儿时，它违背了对物体持久性的某些期望（这吸引了比正常情况下预期的更长时间的观察）。然而，这些解释本身也受到了抨击，因为它们未能对发育机制提供可行的解释：即使某些能力是天生的，它也必须以某种方式发展起来。此外，这些“违反期望”的方法因导致解释歧义而受到批评。总的来说，关于婴儿客体知识的基本种类的起源存在很多分歧。本研究通过测试特定视觉线索在幼儿对物体运动的感知中的作用，以及记录眼球运动和对遮挡显示的反应模式来研究这个问题。通过提供多种方法的融合证据，包括物体连续性评估、多模态（视觉-听觉）物体感知、物体“身份”（根据外观、位置和运动区分物体的能力）和深度感知，该结果有望为婴儿的感知和认知发展提供重要信息。预计这些发现将为阐明发展的基本机制提供证据和解释，并希望这些工作将有助于指导婴儿期客体概念出现的重要问题的理论化。

When we look around the world, we see objects that are separate from one another, each of which is defined by a unique size, shape, surface pattern, and distance. Our ability to perceive coherent objects overcomes incomplete input to the visual system, which is actually fragmented across space and time. That is, most objects we see are partly occluded by other, nearer objects, and may go in and out of sight as they move or as we move. Commonsense notions of "object permanence," the knowledge that objects persist when away from direct perceptual contact, are central to this experience. Origins of object concepts in children have long been a source of interest among philosophers and researchers. Most notably, the pioneering studies of the eminent child psychologist Piaget provided evidence that object concepts develop only after months of experience handling and reaching for objects. More recently, some researchers have challenged Piaget's account on the grounds that it relies too much on reaching as an index of object concepts. Reaching may be difficult for infants, and may underestimate "true" object knowledge. Infants' object concepts, instead, have been proposed to be rooted in innate knowledge structures, such as "object continuity," the understanding that an object, seen to have become occluded, maintains its existence and location or trajectory when out of sight. Such concepts are claimed to be revealed when looking time methods are employed, and an event is presented to an infant that violates some expectation of object permanence (this attracts longer looking than would be expected normally). Such accounts, however, have themselves come under fire for failing to furnish viable explanations of developmental mechanism: Even if some ability is innate, it must have developed somehow. In addition, these "violation of expectation" methods have been criticized as leading to ambiguity in interpretation. In general, then, there is much disagreement about the origins of fundamental kinds of object knowledge in infants. The present proposal investigates this question by testing the role of specific visual cues in young infants' perceptions of object motions, as well as recording eye movements and reaching patterns in response to occlusion displays. The results are expected to yield important information on infants' perceptual and cognitive development, by providing converging evidence from multiple methods including assessments of object continuity, intermodal (visual-auditory) object perception, object "identity" (the ability to distinguish objects on the basis of appearance, location, and movement), and depth perception. It is anticipated that these findings will provide evidence and accounts that elucidate fundamental mechanisms of development, and it is hoped that such work will help guide theorizing on vital questions of the emergence of object concepts in infancy.