Washington, Dec 20 (ANI): Babies as young as 6 months of age or younger know that an object still exists even when it is removed from their sight, a new study has revealed.
Fifteen years ago, textbooks on human development stated that babies had no sense of "object permanence" - the psychological term that describes an infant's belief that an object still exists even when it is out of sight.
But now, psychologists know that isn't true: for young babies, out of sight doesn't automatically mean out of mind.
The new study led by a Johns Hopkins psychologist reveals that even though very young babies can't remember the details of an object that they were shown and which then was hidden, the infants' brains have a set of built in "pointers" that help them retain a notion that something they saw remains in existence even when they can't see it anymore.
"This study addresses one of the classic problems in the study of infant development: What information do infants need to remember about an object in order to remember that it still exists once it is out of their view?" said Melissa Kibbe, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
"The answer is, very little," said Kibbe, who collaborated with colleague Alan Leslie at Rutgers University on the study.
The team found that even though infants cannot remember the shapes of two hidden objects, they are surprised when those objects disappear completely. The conclusion? Infants do, indeed, remember an object's existence without remembering what that object is.
This is important, Kibbe explained, because it sheds light on the brain mechanisms that support memory in infancy and beyond.
"Our results seem to indicate that the brain has a set of 'pointers' that it uses to pick out the things in the world that we need to keep track of," she said.
"The pointer itself doesn't give us any information about what it is pointing to, but it does tell us something is there. Infants use this sense to keep track of objects without having to remember what those objects are," Kibbe added.
In addition, the study may help researchers establish a more accurate timeline of the mental milestones of infancy and childhood.
The study has been published in a recent issue of the journal Psychological Science. (ANI)
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