Object knowledge in infancy: current controversies and approaches

Studies relying on looking-time measures have found evidence of a far more precocious understanding of hidden objects than Piaget originally described . However, there is now a heated controversy surrounding the results from l ooking-time studies - do they constitute any evidence of a conceptual or ex plicit understanding of objects? Moreover, even within the looking-time par adigm, young infants show rapid changes in their understanding of what cons titutes a legitimate occlusion event, and in their ability to use feature i nformation to individuate or keep track of the number of hidden objects. Th e picture that emerges from these studies is that young infants have a limi ted and sometimes fragmented understanding of hidden objects. We suggest th at computational modelling could help provide a coherent account of the eme rgence of object-directed behaviours in infancy, although the fit between c urrent models and existing data remains poor.