Experiences that shape object knowledge

Determine which specific postnatal experiences develop, maintain, and enrich object knowledge—including object permanence—in newborn animals, by identifying which experiences alter object permanence expectations and which do not.

Background

The paper shows that newborn chicks exhibit robust object permanence even when reared with thousands of hidden violations of spatiotemporal continuity, suggesting an inductive bias that is resistant to certain types of opposing evidence. However, prior controlled-rearing studies indicate that visible discontinuities in motion can impair object permanence, implying that not all experiences are equivalent in their developmental impact.

Against this backdrop, the authors explicitly note that it remains unknown which experiences matter for developing, maintaining, and enriching object knowledge. Clarifying this would delineate the boundaries of robustness and the conditions under which object permanence can be modified.