TY - JOUR
T1 - Intuitions about support in 4.5-month-old infants
AU - Needham, Amy
AU - Baillargeon, Renee
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence to: Amy Needham, Department Durham, NC 27705, USA. *This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-21104) to Renee Baillargeon. We thank Jerry DeJong and Judy DeLoache for helpful comments, Elizabeth Mazenko for her help with the data analyses, and Lincoln Craton, Myra Gillespie, Valerie Kolstad, Laura Kotovsky, and the undergraduate students working in the Infant Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois for their help with the data collection. We also thank the parents who kindly agreed to have their infants participate in the studies.
PY - 1993/5
Y1 - 1993/5
N2 - The present experiment examined whether 4.5-month-old expect an object to fall when its support is removed. The infants saw two test events: a possible and an impossible event. In the possible event, a hand deposited a box fully on a platform and then withdrew, leaving the box supported by the platform. In the impossible event, the hand deposited the box beyond the platform and then withdrew, leaving the box suspended in mid-air with no apparent source of support. The infants looked reliably longer at the impossible than at the possible event, suggesting that they expected the box to fall in the impossible event and were surprised that it did not. Evidence for this interpretation was provided by the results of two control conditions. In one, the box fell when released by the hand beyond the platform. In the other, the hand retained its grasp on the box throughout the events, thereby providing continuous support for it. The infants in these two conditions tended to look equally at the test events. Together, these results indicate that, like adults, 4.5-month-old infants realize that objects cannot remain stable without support.
AB - The present experiment examined whether 4.5-month-old expect an object to fall when its support is removed. The infants saw two test events: a possible and an impossible event. In the possible event, a hand deposited a box fully on a platform and then withdrew, leaving the box supported by the platform. In the impossible event, the hand deposited the box beyond the platform and then withdrew, leaving the box suspended in mid-air with no apparent source of support. The infants looked reliably longer at the impossible than at the possible event, suggesting that they expected the box to fall in the impossible event and were surprised that it did not. Evidence for this interpretation was provided by the results of two control conditions. In one, the box fell when released by the hand beyond the platform. In the other, the hand retained its grasp on the box throughout the events, thereby providing continuous support for it. The infants in these two conditions tended to look equally at the test events. Together, these results indicate that, like adults, 4.5-month-old infants realize that objects cannot remain stable without support.
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U2 - 10.1016/0010-0277(93)90002-D
DO - 10.1016/0010-0277(93)90002-D
M3 - Article
C2 - 8324998
AN - SCOPUS:0027598842
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 47
SP - 121
EP - 148
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 2
ER -