Description
Book SynopsisDo humans start life with the capacity to detect and mentally represent the objects around them? Or is our object knowledge instead derived only as the result of prolonged experience with the external world? Are we simply able to perceive objects by watching their actions in the world, or do we have to act on objects ourselves in order to learn about their behavior? Finally, do we come to know all aspects of objects in the same way, or are some aspects of our object understanding more epistemologically privileged than others?The Origins of Object Knowledge presents the most up-to-date survey of the research into how the developing human mind understands the world of objects and their properties. It presents some of the best findings from leading research groups in the field of object representation approached from the perspective of developmental and comparative psychology. Topics covered in the book all address some aspect of what objects are from a psychological perspective; how huma
Table of Contents1. Object representation as a central issue in cognitive science ; 2. Beyond 'what' and 'how many': Capacity, complexity and resolution of infants' object representations ; 3. A comparative approach to understanding human numerical cognition ; 4. Multiple object tracking in infants': four (or so) ways of being discrete ; 5. Do the same principles constrain persisting object representation in infant cognition and adult perception? The cases of continuity and cohesion ; 6. Spatiotemporal priority as a fundamental principle of object persistence ; 7. Infants' representations of material entities ; 8. The developmental origins of animal and artefact concepts ; 9. Building object knowledge from perceptual input ; 10. Modeling the origins of object knowledge ; 11. Induction, overhypotheses, and the shape bias: some arguments and evidence for rational constructivism ; 12. Young infants' expectations about self-propelled objects ; 13. Clever eyes and stupid hands: current thoughts on why dissociations of apparent knowledge occur on solidity tasks
