Representational momentum and children's sensori‐motor representations of objects

Recent research has shown that 2‐year‐olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping at a barrier visible above the occluder. Three‐year‐olds were able to take into account the barrier when searching for the object, while 2‐year‐olds were not. However, both groups judged faster moving objects to travel farther as indicated by their incorrect reaches. Thus, the results show that young children's sensori‐motor representations exhibit a form of representational momentum. This unifies the perceptually based representations of early childhood with adults’ dynamic representations that incorporate physical regularities but that are also available to conscious reasoning.