INFANTS ABILITY TO DRAW INFERENCES ABOUT NONOBVIOUS OBJECT PROPERTIES- EVIDENCE FROM EXPLORATORY PLAY

Generalizing knowledge about nonobvious object properties often involv es inductive inference. For example, having discovered that a particul ar object can float, we may infer that other objects of similar appear ance likewise float. In this research, exploratory play served as a wi ndow on early inductive capability. In the first study, 48 infants bet ween 9 and 16 months explored pairs of novel toys in 2 test conditions : violated expectation (two similar toys were presented in sequence, t he first toy produced an interesting nonobvious property, such as a di stinctive sound or movement, while the second toy was invisibly altere d such that it failed to produce the nonobvious property available in the first toy), and interest control (two similar-looking toys were pr esented in sequence, neither of which produced the interesting propert y). Infants quickly and persistently attempted to reproduce the intere sting property when exploring the second toy of the violated expectati on condition relative to the first toy of the interest control conditi on (a baseline estimate) or the second toy of the interest control con dition (an estimate of simple disinterest). The second study, with 40 9-16-month-olds, confirmed these results and also indicated a degree o f discrimination on infants' part: Infants seldom expected toys of rad ically different appearance to possess the same nonobvious property. T he findings indicate that infants as young as 9 months can draw simple inferences about nonobvious object properties after only brief experi ence with just 1 exemplar.