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Can infants' object concepts be trained?

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Abstract

Decades of research and debate on the origins of object permanence in infancy have contrasted various types of learning with possible innate contributions. A recent paper by Johnson et al. adds a new perspective to this debate by reporting that even very brief training periods can dramatically influence infants' persisting object representations. Such training studies have the potential to constrain ‘nature versus nurture’ debates in novel ways, although important challenges remain.

Section snippets

Looking at the infant's object concept (with eyetracking)

Whereas looking-time methods have dominated much recent research in infancy (e.g. 9, 10), Johnson et al. have returned to older visual tracking methods (e.g. [11]) – now aided by adaptations of recent corneal-reflection eyetracking technology for use with infants – to argue for constructivism. In Johnson's study, 4- and 6-month-old infants viewed simple animated displays in which a ball oscillated back and forth on a computer monitor, passing behind a central occluder. Previous looking-time

Competence or performance?

The authors conclude that persisting object representations are acquired via an associative learning mechanism, from even a surprisingly sparse amount of visual experience. This is taken to weigh heavily against a nativist perspective, which holds that ‘in the absence of evidence to the contrary, functional object representations are rooted in processes that operate independent of experience’ ([8], p. 10568, emphasis added). This represents a new and particularly direct way of demonstrating the

Is it sensible to ask when infants acquire an ability?

A core project in developmental psychology is to pin down the precise ages at which key abilities are acquired. The results of Johnson et al. [8] and other recent training studies [18] question whether this project is always sensible, however, because infants' success will be determined by their immediate past experience. Moreover, a demonstrated competence in one experimental context may not transfer easily to others – or even to the very same context a few moments later. In another important

From when to how: can anomalous competencies be trained?

Ultimately, training studies in infant cognition might have their greatest influence in their potential to determine how experience affects underlying representations – beyond the question of when such representations come on-line. Hence, future training studies could examine in detail precisely which types of abilities and concepts can be trained, and by which types of experience. This research program will be of incredible value to infancy research, by delineating the underlying flexibility

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