31; −0 31) Infants in the no feature condition were 37 5% less l

31; −0.31). Infants in the no feature condition were 37.5% less likely to search for the familiar toy than infants in the identifying feature condition (B2 = −1.15, χ2(1) = 4.97, p < 0.05, 95% CI [−2.16; −0.139]).

This comparison demonstrates that infants’ enhanced performance with the object that had identifying feature on it cannot be explained by infants’ generally stronger and richer representation of the object. It also suggests that the effect of prior location of the target object cannot be ameliorated by providing infants with nonidentifying information MK-2206 about the object or simply by drawing their attention to it. All together, the analyses revealed no differences in infants’ performance with the new toy across the three Small molecule library concentration groups and better performance with the familiar toy in the identifying feature condition than in the two control conditions. These results show that infants have difficulty tracking object identity when an object is moved from room to room. The findings are consistent with the proposal that infants’ confusion about the object identity resulting from such location changes disrupts infants’ ability to reveal understanding of absent reference. In the current study, we investigated the possibility that infants’ difficulty locating a hidden object encountered in a different context before the study is related to their

difficulty establishing the object’s identity across multiple contexts. To facilitate infants’ Isotretinoin ability to track objects across large-scale spatial displacements in this research, we highlighted the same, characteristic feature of the object in both locations where infants encountered the object. This manipulation facilitated infants’ subsequent ability to find the object

in response to a verbal request. When two different features were highlighted or pointed at, infants were less likely to locate the object based on a verbal request for it. When an object was not introduced before the experimental phase, infants had no difficulty locating the object when it was hidden. Together these findings suggest that large-scale spatial displacements may disrupt infants’ ability to locate verbal referents, but that they can be released from this difficulty if attempts are made to clarify that the referent is the same object as the one that they had recently seen in a different context. A limitation of the current study is that toy type was confounded with toy familiarity: The dog was always new to infants, and the pig was always familiar. However, the condition differences found for the familiar toy suggest that the current results cannot be explained by infants’ preference to one toy over the other. If a toy preference were the only factor guiding infants’ responses, they should not have searched for the (familiar) pig in any of the conditions.

Comments are closed.