OBJECT KNOWLEDGE IN YOUNG INFANTS

当成年人看到一个物体遮挡另一个物体时，他们通常 假设被遮挡的对象(A)继续存在于 遮挡对象；(B)保留物理和空间属性 在咬合之前拥有；及(C)受相同规限 咬合之前的物理规律。皮亚杰(1954)声称 婴儿直到8、12、12岁才开始分享这些假设 和18个月龄。在过去三年中，我们 已经进行了一系列广泛的实验，旨在 考察皮亚杰对婴儿发展的描述 对被遮挡物体的信念。我们所取得的结果确实如此 不支持皮亚杰的描述。这些结果表明：(A) 只有3个月大的婴儿就能理解这些物体 咬合时继续存在；(B)年仅5.5个月的婴儿 年龄段的人意识到，物体保持其物理和空间 (C)年仅9个月的婴儿 年龄会对被遮挡的对象进行推断。一般而言，这些 研究结果表明，幼儿对身体的理解 世界比皮亚杰和他的作品先进得多 继任者让我们相信。 拟议研究的第一个目标是进行一些 我们的发现提出了一些问题，即：(1)婴儿较少 年龄大于5.5个月的能够代表被遮挡的属性 物体？(2)9个月大的婴儿有多复杂？ 推断被遮挡对象的物理和空间属性， 年龄较小的婴儿也能做出这样的推论吗？ 最后，(3)如何解释两者之间的差异 皮亚杰的结论和我们的发现所建议的结论？这个 这个应用程序的第二个目标是探索 婴儿的物理世界。两个物理域将是 调查：(1)幼儿对支持关系的理解 (2)幼儿对碰撞事件的认识。自从我们的研究以来 揭示了婴儿对物体永久性的理解是 令人惊讶的复杂，我们有理由期待 对婴儿物理世界的其他方面的调查将 也揭示了迄今未被怀疑的能力。

When adults see an object occlude another object, they typically assume that the occluded object (a) continues to exist behind the occluding object; (b) retains the physical and spatial properties it possessed prior to occlusion; and (c) is subject to the same physical laws as prior to occlusion. Piaget (1954) claimed that infants do not begin to share these assumptions until about 8, 12, and 18 months of age, respectively. Over the past three years, we have conducted an extensive series of experiments designed to investigate Piaget's description of the development of infants' beliefs about occluded objects. The results we have obtained do not support Piaget's description. These results indicate that (a) infants as young as 3 months of age understand that objects continue to exist when occluded; (b) infants as young as 5.5 months of age are aware that objects retain their physical and spatial properties when occluded; and (c) infants as young as 9 months of age make inferences about occluded objects. In general, these findings indicate that young infants' understanding of the physical world is far more advanced than the work of Piaget and his successors had led us to believe. The first aim of the proposed research is to pursue a number of questions raised by our findings, namely: (1) Are infants less than 5.5 months of age able to represent the properties of occluded objects? (2) How sophisticated are 9-month-old infants at inferring the physical and spatial properties of occluded objects, and are younger infants also capable of making such inferences? Finally, (3) How can one account for the discrepancy between Piaget's conclusions and those suggested by our findings? The second aim of this application is to explore other facets of infants' physical world. Two physical domains will be investigated: (1) infants' understanding of support relations and (2) infants' understanding of collision events. Since our research has revealed that infants' understanding of object permanence is surprisingly sophisticated, it is reasonable to expect that investigations of other aspects of infants' physical world will also bring to light hitherto unsuspected competencies.