Object Concept VOE Ramp Study Baillargeon NARRATOR: At the University of Illinois, a team of researchers is now using ingenious experiments to discover previously unsuspected abilities of newborns and young children. Professor Rene Baillargeon studies how babies develop the concept of object permanence. RENE BAILLARGEON: By object permanence, we mean really a set of beliefs about objects. The first and most fundamental belief is that objects continue to exist when hidden. The first person to investigate the development of object permanence beliefs in infants was Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist. And he claimed that it's not until approximately eight to nine months of age that infants understand that objects continue to exist when hidden and that it's not until approximately 12 months of age that babies begin to understand that objects not only exist but retain their physical and spatial properties when hidden. What we've done is to devise a series of tasks where the infant simply had to look at the possible and impossible events. NARRATOR: In this experiment, a six-month-old baby watches a cart rolling down tracks going behind a screen coming out the other side. The screen is lifted to show a block sitting behind the tracks. Next, the baby sees the block placed on top of the tracks. The screen comes down. The cart rolls exactly as before. But in the real world of permanent objects, the block should have stopped the cart. The baby stares longer at this apparently impossible event. RENE BAILLARGEON: When infants are surprised or puzzled by an vent, they tend to look at it longer. So our prediction is always that if infants perceive the events as we do, then they will look longer at the impossible or magical event than at the possible event. And what we found is that infants as young as 3 and 1/2 months of age and perhaps younger but certainly as young as 3 and 1/2 months of age understand that objects continue to exist when hidden. One contribution of this research is to say that we must really take a very close look at infants' physical knowledge. It's much richer, much more sophisticated than used to be thought.