Infants' Physical World

Abstract

Investigations of infants' physical world over the past 20 years have revealed two main findings. First, even very young infants possess expectations about physical events. Second, these expectations undergo significant developments during the first year of life, as infants form event categories, such as occlusion, containment, and covering events, and identify the variables relevant for predicting outcomes in each category. A new account of infants' physical reasoning integrates these findings. Predictions from the account are examined in change-blindness and teaching experiments.