Understanding the movements of objects: Early developments in spatial cognition

Abstract

What do infants understand about movements of an object from one place to another? This is a central problem in the study of early cognitive development, because a full understanding of the movement of objects presupposes representational and inferential abilities that are often considered to distinguish adult‐like intelligence from the sensorimotor intelligence of infants. The two experiments in this paper examine developments in children's understanding of visible and invisible displacements between 9 months and 30 months of age. The first focuses on 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds' understanding of single displacements. The results suggest that 9‐month‐olds can understand visible but not invisible displacements, while 12‐month‐olds understand both visible and invisible displacements. The second experiment further tests children's early understanding of visible displacements by looking at performance on spatial transposition problems. The results again support the conclusion that infants can infer invisible movements by about 1 year of age, although large improvements in performance continue to occur through the later part of the infancy period. Across both studies, consistent evidence that infants already have at least a limited understanding of the movements of objects, and that the age groups show similar patterns of performance despite large improvements in their levels of performance, points to substantial continuity in early cognitive development.