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Predicting the Outcomes of Physical Events: Two‐Year‐Olds Fail to Reveal Knowledge of Solidity and Support
Author(s) -
Hood Bruce,
Carey Susan,
Prasada Sandeep
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00247
Subject(s) - psychology , solidity , developmental psychology , object (grammar) , motion (physics) , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , programming language
Two‐year‐olds' ( N = 153) knowledge of solidity was tested in four search tasks adapted from infant looking‐time experiments. In Experiment 1, 2‐year‐olds failed to search in the correct location for a falling ball after a hidden shelf that blocked its trajectory had been inserted in the apparatus. Experiment 2 extended this finding by showing that 2‐year‐olds failed to take into account the effects of either removing or inserting a shelf in their search for a toy dropped behind a screen. Experiment 3 examined sensitivity to the constraint provided by a solid barrier on horizontal motion. In all three experiments, 2‐year‐old children searched initially at the location where they saw the object during familiarization. Experiment 4, using multiple test trials but no familiarization to a pretest location, also showed that 2‐year‐olds failed to take the presence or absence of a barrier into account when planning where to search for a toy they had seen dropped behind a screen. In all of these studies, 2‐year‐olds showed no evidence of representing solidity and support constraints on the trajectories of falling objects. Experiments 1 and 3 also included 2H‐year‐olds ( N = 31), who succeeded on these search tasks. The implications of the poor performance of 2‐year‐olds, in the face of success by very young infants on looking‐time measures of sensitivity to similar constraints on object motion, are discussed.