Читать книгу Lifespan Development - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 256

Other critics of Piaget’s views of infants’ capacity for object permanence focus on an error that 8- to 12-month-old infants make, known as the A-not-B error. The A-not-B error involves the following scenario: An infant is able to uncover a toy hidden behind a barrier. He then sees the toy moved from behind one barrier (Place A) to another (Place B), but he continues to look for the toy in Place A, even after watching it be moved to Place B (see Figure 5.4). Piaget believed that the infant incorrectly, but persistently, searches for the object in Place A because he lacks object permanence.

Some researchers, however, point out that infants look at Place B, the correct location, at the same time as they mistakenly reach for Place A, suggesting that they understand the correct location of the object (Place B) but cannot keep themselves from reaching for Place A because of neural and motor immaturity (Diamond, 1991). Other researchers propose that infants cannot restrain the impulse to repeat a behavior that was previously rewarded (Zelazo, Reznick, & Spinazzola, 1998). When looking-time procedures are used to study the A-not-B error (Ahmed & Ruffman, 1998), infants look longer when the impossible event occurs (when the toy is moved from Place A to Place B but is then found at Place A) than when the expected event occurs (when the toy is moved from Place A to Place B and is found at Place B). This suggests that infants have object permanence, but their motor skills prohibit them from demonstrating it in A-not-B tasks. One longitudinal study followed infants from 5 to 10 months of age and found that between 5 and 8 months, infants showed better performance on an A-not-B looking task than on a reaching task. Nine- and 10-month-old infants performed equally well on A-not-B looking and reaching tasks (Cuevas & Bell, 2010). Age-related changes in performance on A-not-B and other object permanence tasks may be due to maturation of brain circuitry controlling motor skills and inhibition as well as advances in the ability to control attention (Cuevas & Bell, 2010; Marcovitch, Clearfield, Swingler, Calkins, & Bell, 2016).

Description

Figure 5.3 Object Permanence in Young Infants: Baillargeon’s Drawbridge Study

(A) Side view of habituation and test displays. Infants were habituated to a 180-degree drawbridge-like motion. (B) In the Experimental Condition, infants completed two types of test trials with a new object, a box. The Impossible Test involved the same full 180° rotation from habituation, but now the screen surprisingly passed through the box as it completed its rotation (with the box disappearing as it became obscured). The Possible Test involved a novel shorter rotation of screen up to the point where it would contact the box, where it stopped; this motion was “possible” in terms of solidity and object permanence. In the Control Condition, the screen rotations were identical, but no box was presented (such that both motions were equally possible). The results from the test phase are depicted in the right panels of (B). In the Experimental Condition, infants looked longer at the Impossible Test but not the Possible Test. However, in the Control Condition, no preference was observed. They looked equally at the full and partial rotation. These results suggest a violation of infants’ expectations regarding object permanence.

Source: Turk-Browne et al., 2008.

Description

Figure 5.4 A-Not-B Error

The infant continues to look for the ball under Place A despite having seen the ball moved to Place B.