What Is Object Permanence According To Piaget?

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. It requires the ability to form a mental representation (schema) of the object.

For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it. At the beginning of this stage, the child behaves as if the toy had disappeared.

This cognitive skill typically develops in infants around 8 months of age and is a crucial milestone in child development. Peek-a-boo games help demonstrate this concept.

The attainment of object permanence generally signals the transition from the sensorimotor stage to the preoperational stage of development.

Stages of Object Permanence

Piaget (1954) identified six stages in the development of object permanence. These stages represent a gradual progression from a lack of object permanence to a sophisticated understanding of objects and their movements:

Birth to 4 Months: Initial Lack of Permanence

During the first two stages of sensorimotor development (0-4 months), infants perceive objects as fleeting sensory experiences, directly tied to their actions.

When an object disappears from their visual field, it ceases to exist for them. For instance, a newborn may show distress when the breast is removed but will not search for it, as if it has vanished entirely.

At this point, the world is a series of disconnected sensory images that appear and disappear based on the infant’s immediate actions

As early as the second day of life, infants seem to “seek” with their lips the breast that has escaped them. Similarly, infants as young as 3 days old will search for their thumbs that have brushed their mouths.

This suggests an early awareness of the continued existence of objects even when they are not in direct contact.

4 to 8 Months: Beginning of Permanence

During the third stage, infants begin to exhibit behaviors suggesting a rudimentary understanding of object permanence. 

Around 4 to 6 months old, infants will visually follow objects that move out of their reach and even attempt to grasp them with their hands.

This behavior shows a developing coordination between vision and touch and a more active engagement with the object.

Around 5 to 7 months old, infants begin to remove obstacles blocking their view, engaging in a rudimentary form of hide-and-seek.

While this might seem to demonstrate object permanence, Piaget argued that it is more about extending the visual accommodation movement.

The infant is simply trying to re-establish visual contact, not demonstrating an understanding of the object’s continued existence behind the screen.

8 to 12 Months:  Practical Permanence

Between 8-12 months, a significant shift occurs. Infants now actively search for objects hidden behind screens, indicating a more developed understanding of object permanence.

They can remove obstacles to retrieve a hidden object, suggesting they understand its continued existence behind the barrier.

This stage is marked by the coordination of secondary schemas and their application to new situations. 

This means that infants can combine learned actions to achieve a goal, such as using their hand to move a cloth covering a toy.

However, this understanding is still limited. Infants struggle to grasp the concept of sequential displacements.

If an object is hidden in multiple locations, they often search in the place it was first hidden, suggesting they still link object permanence to specific locations rather than understanding its continuous existence across displacements.

 At this stage, the object is still understood in relation to specific actions and contexts, not as a fully independent entity

12 to 18 Months: Object Permanence in Perceived Displacements

Around 12-18 months, infants become capable of tracking visible sequential displacements. They will search for an object in the location where it was last seen, even if it was hidden multiple times.

This indicates that the object is now understood as a permanent entity that maintains its identity across movements within the child’s visual field.

However, challenges arise when displacements occur outside the field of direct perception.

If the infant doesn’t see the object being moved, their understanding falters, and they revert to searching in the last place they saw the object

18 to 24 Months: Complete Object Permanence

From 18 months onward, infants achieve a more complete understanding of object permanence, encompassing invisible displacements.

Representational thought develops, allowing infants to hold mental representations of unseen objects – demonstrating object permanence (Piaget, 1954; Wang et al., 2004).

Infants can now mentally represent the object’s movements, even those they haven’t directly witnessed.

This ability to reason about unseen events marks a significant step towards representational thought, as the child is no longer solely reliant on immediate sensory information.

They understand the object’s continuous existence and can deduce its location even after invisible displacements.

This stage coincides with the emergence of tertiary circular reactions, where infants actively experiment with objects to discover their properties and the effects of different actions upon them.

For example, an infant might repeatedly drop different objects from various heights to observe the varying effects.

This experimentation contributes to a deeper understanding of object properties and their independent existence.

Blanket and Ball Study

Aim:

Infants progress from a world where objects exist only in relation to their actions to a world where objects have their own independent existence and can be mentally represented even when hidden.

The use of simple objects like balls and blankets allowed Piaget to create experimental scenarios that reveal the underlying cognitive processes involved in this development.

Piaget (1963) wanted to investigate at what age children acquire object permanence.

Method:

Piaget hid a toy under a blanket, while the child was watching, and observed whether or not the child searched for the hidden toy.

Searching for the hidden toy was evidence of object permanence.

The child’s ability to search for a hidden object, even after multiple displacements, indicates a mental representation of the object’s existence and location

Piaget assumed that the child could only search for a hidden toy if s/he had a mental representation of it.

Results:

When a ball or other desirable object is hidden under a blanket, infants under 8 months often do not attempt to retrieve it.

This lack of search behavior suggests that they do not yet understand that the object continues to exist when out of sight. To them, it’s as if the object has simply vanished

A significant shift occurs around 8-9 months of age when infants begin to actively search for objects hidden under blankets. They start to understand that objects can exist independently of their own actions and are not simply annihilated when out of sight

However, their understanding of object permanence is still limited at this stage. They often fail to track the object’s movements and tend to search for it in its initial hiding place, even after witnessing it being moved to a new location.

This behavior, termed the “A-not-B error,” suggests that infants still struggle to differentiate between the object and the specific location where they first found it.

Conclusion

Children around 8 months have object permanence because they can form a mental representation of the object in their minds.

The ability to represent objects mentally allows infants to start forming a sense of past, present, and future.

They can recall past events involving objects that are no longer present and anticipate future events based on their understanding of object permanence.

Evaluation:

Piaget assumed the results of his study occurred because the children under 8 months did not understand that the object still existed underneath the blanket (and therefore did not reach for it).

However, there are alternative reasons why a child may not search for an object rather than a lack of understanding of the situation.

The child could become distracted or lose interest in the object and therefore lack the motivation to search for it, or simply may not have the physical coordination to carry out the motor movements necessary for the retrieval of the object (Mehler & Dupoux, 1994).

Critical Evaluation

While Piaget’s work on object permanence has been immensely influential, his theory has faced some criticisms:

• Underestimation of Infants’ Abilities: Some researchers argue that Piaget’s methods might have underestimated infants’ abilities. Studies using different methodologies, such as those focusing on infants’ looking times rather than their reaching behavior, suggest that infants might develop some aspects of object permanence earlier than Piaget proposed.
• Emphasis on Motor Development: Critics point out that Piaget’s theory places a heavy emphasis on the role of motor development in cognitive development. They suggest that cognitive understanding might precede the development of certain motor skills needed to demonstrate that understanding.
• Lack of Attention to Social and Cultural Influences: Piaget’s theory has been criticized for not adequately considering the role of social and cultural influences in cognitive development. The interactions infants have with caregivers and the specific cultural practices they are exposed to can potentially influence the pace and trajectory of object permanence development.

In this classic experiment, a toy is repeatedly hidden at location A, and after a short delay, infants are allowed to retrieve it.

The process is then modified – the toy is clearly hidden at location B, and after another delay, infants are given the opportunity to reach for it.

Infants aged 8-10 months consistently reach for location A despite having witnessed the toy being hidden at location B.

This behavior, observed during Stage 4 of object permanence (8-12 months), demonstrates that their understanding of object permanence remains limited. They often fail to track the object’s movements and tend to search in the initial hiding place.

This error suggests that infants at this stage struggle to differentiate between the object itself and the specific location where they first found it.

While they have developed some understanding of object permanence, they haven’t yet mastered the ability to update their mental representation of the object’s location.

There are multiple interpretations for this error:

• Egocentric Spatial Understanding: Infants may still have an egocentric understanding of space, where locations are defined in relation to their own bodies rather than as objective points in the environment. This means that when the object is hidden at B, they might still perceive it as being associated with the location where they previously found it (A).
• Limited Working Memory: Infants’ working memory might not be fully developed at this stage. While they can briefly remember seeing the object at B, this memory may fade quickly, leading them to default to the location (A) strongly associated with their previous successful searches.
• Influence of Practical Action Schemas: Infants’ actions and previous successes play a significant role in their understanding of object permanence. The repeated act of finding the object at A creates a strong action schema. When faced with the new hiding location (B), this well-established schema may override their less developed understanding of the object’s new location.

Piaget’s interpretation leaned towards the influence of practical schemas and the incomplete differentiation between the object and the action of retrieving it.

However, more recent research has also considered the role of egocentric spatial understanding and limitations in working memory as contributing factors.

Bower and Wishart: Reaching in the Dark

There is evidence that object permanence occurs earlier than Piaget claimed. Bower and Wishart (1972) used a lab experiment to study infants between 1 – 4 months old.

Piaget’s search task requires infants to coordinate multiple actions (reaching grabbing and pulling a blanket), which they might not be able to do until around nine months of age.

Bower argued that using methods that don’t require such complex coordination can reveal object permanence in younger infants

Method:

Bower and Wishart used a method that didn’t rely on manual search tasks , which are complex and might underestimate infants’ abilities.

Instead of using Piaget’s blanket technique, they waited for the infant to reach for an object, then turned out the lights so the object was no longer visible.

The infant was first shown the object in light and was physically prevented from reaching it. Then, the lights were switched off, and the infant was allowed to reach for the now silent and invisible object in the darkness.

They then filmed the infant using an infrared camera. 

The researchers focused on analyzing reaches, including arm extensions that made contact with the object and those that could have reached the object if they had been accurate.

Successful reaches were categorized as touches or successful grasps.

Results:

The results revealed that the infant continued to reach for the object for up to 90 seconds after it became invisible.

The researchers observed that infants often waited for a period of time after the lights were extinguished before attempting to reach for the object.

This delay suggests that the infants were relying on a memory trace of the object’s location rather than simply extending a reaching action initiated before the lights went out.

Interestingly, the researchers found that even if infants engaged in other behaviors, such as crying or looking around, after the lights were turned off, their reaches were still accurate.

This finding further supports the idea that infants were utilizing a visual memory trace to guide their reaching, even in the presence of distracting activities.

Critical Evaluation:

Again, just like Piaget’s study, there are also criticisms of Bower’s “reaching in the dark” findings.

Each child had up to 3 minutes to complete the task and reach for the object. Within this time period, it is plausible they may have successfully completed the task by accident.

For example, randomly reaching out and finding the object or even reaching out due to the distress of the lights going out (rather than reaching out with the intention of searching for an object).

Alternatively, the act of reaching in the dark could be explained as the extension of an action that was initiated before the lights were turned off, rather than a deliberate attempt to retrieve a mentally represented object.

Violation of Expectation Research

A challenge to Piaget’s claims comes from a series of studies designed by Renee Baillargeon. She used a technique known as the violation of expectation (VOE) paradigm.

It exploits the fact that infants tend to look for longer at things they have not encountered before.

In a VOE experiment, an infant is first introduced to a novel situation. They are repeatedly shown this stimulus until they indicate, by looking away, that it is no longer new to them. In Baillargeon et al.’s (1985, 1987) study, the habituation stimulus was a ‘drawbridge’ that moved through 180 degrees.

Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman, aimed to assess object permanence in 5-month-old infants using a habituation paradigm.

This experiment tested the infants’ understanding of the solidity principle, the concept that solid objects cannot pass through each other.

Method:

A colored box was placed behind a screen that moved back and forth like a drawbridge. Infants were first habituated to the screen moving without the box present.

After habituation, a box was placed behind the screen, and the infants were shown two test events:

• Possible Event: The screen moved until it reached the box and stopped.
• Impossible Event The screen moved through the space occupied by the box, completing a 180-degree arc before returning to its starting position. The drawbridge appeared to pass through the box and ended up lying flat, and the box apparently disappeared.

The researchers reasoned that if the infants understood that the box continued to exist behind the screen, they should find the impossible event surprising, as it violated the solidity principle.

This surprise would manifest in longer looking times at the impossible event.

To rule out the possibility that infants simply preferred the 180-degree movement of the impossible event, a control experiment was conducted where the box was placed beside the screen, out of its path.

In this case, infants showed no preference for either the 180-degree or the 120-degree screen movement.

Results:

Baillargeon found that infants spent much longer looking at the impossible event.

She concluded that this indicated surprise on the infants’ part and that the infants were surprised because they had expectations about the behavior of physical objects that the impossible event had violated.

In other words, the infants knew that the box still existed behind the drawbridge and, furthermore, that they knew that one solid object could not just pass through another.

The infants in this study were five months old, at which Piaget would say that such knowledge is beyond them.

Critical Evaluation

Many studies suggest infants as young as 2.5 months can represent hidden objects, using a violation-of-expectation (VOE) method.

In VOE studies, longer looking at an unexpected versus expected event provides evidence infants have an expectation, detect its violation, and are surprised (Baillargeon & Luo, 2002).

However, some have proposed “transient preference” accounts questioning these interpretations (Bogartz, Shinskey & Schilling, 2000; Thelen & Smith, 1994).

These suggest familiarization trials create superficial preferences for unexpected events absent real expectations.

For example, infants may build event sequence predictions that unexpected events disrupt, or attend only to novel elements in unexpected events due to limited processing, or prefer events resembling unfinished familiarization processing.

The debate centers on whether young infants truly represent hidden objects or just show transient preferences in VOE tasks. Resolving this has implications for understanding cognitive development in infancy.

Adaptive Process View

There is a debate about when infants achieve “object permanence” – knowing objects still exist when out of sight.

In some tasks, even young infants show expectations suggesting they understand object permanence. Yet in other tasks, infants don’t retrieve hidden objects until around 8 months.

The traditional view is that early successes reflect having the object permanence concept, while failures reflect deficits in abilities to act on this knowledge.

An alternative “adaptive process” view sees infants’ knowledge as graded, embedded in behavior-generating mechanisms, and gradually strengthened with experience.

According to this view, different behaviors place differing demands on emerging knowledge representations.

The adaptive process view proposes that infants’ knowledge is graded rather than all-or-none (Munakata et al., 1997). Knowledge exists on a continuum that gradually strengthens over time through repeated experiences.

This knowledge is embedded within the neural mechanisms that generate observable behaviors (Thelen & Smith, 1994), rather than taking the form of abstract, explicit principles.

The adaptive process view proposes that infants’ knowledge is:

• Graded – Knowledge is not all-or-none. Instead, there are degrees of knowledge that strengthen gradually over time.
• Embedded – Knowledge is embedded within the mechanisms and neural systems that generate observable behavior. It does not take the form of abstract, explicit principles.
• Strengthened through experience – As infants accumulate experiences, the connections between relevant neurons are gradually strengthened. This serves to solidify internal representations of concepts like object permanence.

As infants accumulate experiences, the connections between relevant neurons are gradually strengthened. This serves to solidify internal representations of concepts like object permanence (Munakata et al., 1997).

Different behaviors make different demands on the knowledge representations that are currently available (Smith & Thelen, 1993).

For example, merely looking at an event relies only on weakly activated representations, whereas reaching for hidden objects requires stronger representations that can overcome conflicting perceptual information (Munakata et al., 1997).

Therefore, failures on some tasks do not necessarily indicate a complete lack of knowledge. Rather, success or failure is dependent on whether the existing state of knowledge representations is sufficient to drive that specific behavior in that specific context (Fischer & Bidell, 1991).

Over time, as connections strengthen through repeated experiences, behavior becomes increasingly flexible as infants become able to succeed across more varying situations and tasks.

Knowledge thus emerges gradually from the dynamics of neural systems adapting to make sense of the environment (Thelen & Smith, 1994).

Help Your Child Develop Object Permanence

Rather than an all-or-none achievement, research suggests object permanence emerges gradually as a progression of knowledge and skills from reflexes to representation.

Caregivers can promote development through play allowing intention, cause-and-effect reasoning, and representational abilities to unfold.

Playing interactive games that involve temporarily hiding and revealing toys is an excellent way to help your child learn that objects still exist when out of sight. Here are some easy activities:

• Play Peekaboo. Cover your face or hide a toy behind your hands, then reveal. Ask, “Where’s the toy?” before showing it again. This teaches object permanence skills.
• Hide Toys. Hide your child’s favorite toy under blankets or behind furniture. Encourage them to search for the hidden object, then celebrate when they find it. Retrieving hidden items promotes the understanding that unseen toys still exist.
• Read Hide & Seek Books. Books featuring lift-the-flap activities allow your child to actively engage with finding hidden objects on the page. Choose sturdy board books they can handle.
• Play Hunting Games. Have your child close their eyes while you hide a toy. Give warm praise when they successfully locate and retrieve the toy you hid. This makes learning object permanence concepts fun!

Playing interactive hiding games provides natural opportunities to develop your child’s understanding that objects continue existing separately from their own perception. Have fun promoting this key cognitive skill!