Core Knowledge

The Domain of Objects

Growing up, children never receive explicit instruction about how objects behave and interact, yet they draw universally similar expectations. For example, they all expect unsupported objects to fall down; they universally agree that hidden objects do not cease to exist when they are occluded from view. Such expectations appear to be universal across age groups as well as across individuals. Expectations about object knowledge are evident in other species as well. Rhesus macaques expect an object to stop when it comes in contact with a wall and not to pass through it. Humans and chickens have similar expectations about partially occluded objects. These abilities may have a long history across generations and species and are most likely the product of evolution.

Experiments with infants show that from an early age infants parse the visual array into objects and events. As early as 2 months of age, infants expect objects to be permanent (e.g., they do not blink in and out of existence) and that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time (e.g., a ball cannot pass through a wall). Common to all humans, objects are perceived as bounded, solid, continuous entities. Yet object knowledge abilities are not fully mature at birth. Infants are active learners with powerful mechanisms of associative learning and memory abilities that become integrated with core knowledge systems.

These initial core knowledge representations are primitive and leave many aspects of object knowledge undefined. With development, specifically through experience interacting with the environment, infants learn which variables predict the outcomes of events more precisely. For example, at 2 months of age infants already know that an object placed inside a container will move with the container when the container travels to a new location because objects do not pass through one another.

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