Object permanence

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The object permanence or Personenpermanenz is the cognitive ability to know that an object or a person even still exists, if it or they are outside the perceptual field is. The term goes back to the Swiss developmental psychologist and epistemologist Jean Piaget .

Development of object permanence in humans

Stages according to Piaget

According to Piaget, knowledge of the continued existence of objects that disappear from the field of vision is not innate, but must first be acquired in the course of the cognitive development of the growing child.

In the Piaget model of cognitive development , object permanence is acquired in the 1st stage, the sensorimotor stage (0–2 years). An object that is hidden from the child's eyes by a screen in the early stages of development seems to literally disappear for the child. According to Piaget, object permanence does not develop in humans until the age of 8 months. The concept is then developed over a period of 8 to 12 months, but in the transition phase still leads to the “ A-not-B search error ”, which was also described by Piaget.

Current Results

According to Piaget, the ability of object permanence only arises over a lengthy development process. In recent studies, children exhibited cognitive skills earlier than Piaget's findings. This is particularly due to methodological flaws in Piaget's experiments. His tasks often required additional motor , language and cognitive skills that had little to do with the competence to be examined. The object permanence could be determined in simplified tasks much earlier (3.5 months).

Object permanence in animals

Object permanence also occurs in some animals such as (non-human) primates, cats, dogs, magpies, and carrion crows .

In object persistence tests, dogs make a typical mistake that 10-month-old children make, the A- not-B error : If food is hidden in two different places A and B, they look for it in place A, where it was first hidden. They do this even if they have observed that the food has been hidden at other location B. Hand-raised wolves and monkeys don't make this mistake. It is attributed to the special human communication skills that dogs share with humans, and which may be a result of domestication .

literature

  • Robert Siegler / Judy DeLoache / Nancy Eisenberg: Developmental Psychology in Childhood and Adolescence , Munich 2005, p. 187 f.
  • Beate Sodian: Development of Thought , in: Rolf Oerter / Leo Montada (Ed.): Developmental Psychology. A textbook , Weinheim 2008, pp. 436–479, here: p. 438 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ R. Oerter & L. Montada: Developmental Psychology. Beltz, Weinheim 2002, p. 174.
  2. ↑ Marcus Hasselhorn, Wolfgang Schneider (Ed.): Handbuch der Entwicklungspsychologie. (Series: Handbuch der Psychologie, Vol. 7). Hogrefe, Göttingen 2007, p. 20.
  3. ↑ J. GOMEZ: Species comparative studies and cognitive development. In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9, 2005, pp. 118-125, doi : 10.1016 / j.tics.2005.01.004 .
  4. ↑ Estrella Triana, Robert Pasnak: Object permanence in cats and dogs. In: Animal Learning & Behavior. 9, 1981, pp. 135-139, doi : 10.3758 / BF03212035 .
  5. ↑ HC Miller, CD Gipson, A. Vaughan, R. Rayburn-Reeves, TR Zentall: Object permanence in dogs: Invisible displacement in a rotation task. In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 16, 2009, pp. 150-155, doi : 10.3758 / PBR.16.1.150 .
  6. ↑ Bettina Pollok, Helmut Prior, Onur Guentuerkuen: Development of object permanence in food-storing magpies (Pica pica) .. In: Journal of Comparative Psychology. 114, 2000, pp. 148-157, doi : 10.1037 / 0735-7036.114.2.148 .
  7. ↑ Almut Hoffmann, Vanessa Ruettler, Andreas Nieder: Ontogeny of object permanence and object tracking in the carrion crow, Corvus corone. In: Animal Behavior. 82, 2011, pp. 359-367, doi : 10.1016 / j.anbehav.2011.05.012 .
  8. ^ J. Topal, G. Gergely, A. Erdohegyi, G. Csibra, A. Miklosi : Differential Sensitivity to Human Communication in Dogs, Wolves, and Human Infants. In: Science. 325, 2009, pp. 1269-1272, doi : 10.1126 / science.1176960 .
  9. ^ M. Tomasello, J. Kaminski: Like Infant, Like Dog. In: Science. 325, 2009, pp. 1213-1214, doi : 10.1126 / science.1179670 .