Origins of Object Concepts

当我们环顾世界时，我们看到的物体彼此分离，每个物体都由独特的大小，形状，表面图案和距离定义。 我们感知连贯物体的能力克服了视觉系统的不完整输入，视觉系统实际上在空间和时间上是支离破碎的。 也就是说，我们看到的大多数物体都被其他更近的物体部分遮挡，并且可能随着它们的移动或我们的移动而进入或离开视线。 常识性的“物体恒存性”概念，即物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。 儿童客体概念的起源一直是哲学家和研究人员感兴趣的一个来源。 最值得注意的是，著名的儿童心理学家皮亚杰（Piaget）的开创性研究提供了证据，证明物体概念只有在经历了几个月的处理和接触物体的经验之后才能发展。 最近，一些研究者对皮亚杰的解释提出了质疑，理由是皮亚杰的解释太过依赖于作为对象概念的索引的到达。对于婴儿来说，接触可能是困难的，并且可能低估了“真正的”物体知识。 相反，婴儿的物体概念被认为植根于先天的知识结构，如“物体连续性”，即理解物体在被遮挡时保持其存在和位置或轨迹。 这些概念被认为是揭示时，看时间的方法，并提出了一个事件，婴儿违反了一些预期的客体永存性（这吸引了更长的期待比正常情况下）。 然而，这些解释本身也因未能对发展机制提供可行的解释而受到批评：即使某些能力是天生的，它也一定是以某种方式发展起来的。 此外，这些“违背期望”的方法被批评为导致解释上的模糊不清。 因此，一般来说，关于婴儿基本客体知识的起源，存在着很大的分歧。 本建议调查这个问题，通过测试的作用，具体的视觉线索在幼儿的感知物体运动，以及记录眼球运动和达到模式，以响应闭塞显示。 这些结果预计将产生关于婴儿知觉和认知发展的重要信息，通过提供来自多种方法的会聚证据，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。 预计这些发现将提供证据和说明，阐明发展的基本机制，并希望这样的工作将有助于指导理论的重要问题的出现对象概念在婴儿期。

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.