Limits to infants' knowledge of objects: The case of magical appearance

Young infants have an impressive knowledge of material objects. They apprec iate that distinct objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, a re internally cohesive units that maintain their boundaries, and exist cont inuously in space and time. We report a surprising limit to this body of un derstanding: Although 8-month-olds responded to the "magical" disappearance of an object as an unexpected event, they did not so respond to a magical appearance. These results suggest that infants' understanding of objects di ffers from adult cognition in important respects. We discuss Sour possible ways in which this finding can be reconciled with evidence that infants app reciate the spatiotemporal continuity of objects.