Understanding the effects of one’s actions upon hidden objects and the development of search behaviour in 7-month-old infants

Infants' understanding of how their actions affect the visibility of hidden objects may be a crucial aspect of the development of search behaviour. To investigate this possibility, 7-month-old infants took part in a two-day training study. At the start of the first session, and at the end of the second, all infants performed a search task with a hiding-well. On both days, infants had an additional training experience. The ‘Agency group’ learnt to spin a turntable to reveal a hidden toy, whilst the ‘Means-End’ group learnt the same means-end motor action, but the toy was always visible. The Agency group showed greater improvement on the hiding-well search task following their training experience. We suggest that the Agency group's turntable experience was effective because it provided the experience of bringing objects back into visibility by one's actions. Further, the performance of the Agency group demonstrates generalized transfer of learning across situations with both different motor actions and stimuli in infants as young as 7 months

Infants' object search: Effects of variable object visibility under constant means-end demands

Why do infants have difficulty searching for objects hidden by occluders before 8 months when other evidence has indicated they are sensitive to hidden objects months earlier? One explanation suggests that infants know hidden objects exist but lack the means-end skill to retrieve them from occluders. However, this experiment explores the unique contribution of object visibility by presenting 6- and 10-month-old infants with visible and hidden objects, although both conditions were equated for means-end demands. In contrast, there were no differences among 10-month-old infants. These results highlight the effect of object visibility on search and indicate that a means-end deficit cannot be the only cause of search problems. Explanations for the effect of object visibility are discussed

Are infants in the dark about hidden objects?

Infants appear to search for objects hidden by darkness earlier in development than they search for objects hidden by an occluder in the light. However, these two types of search tasks have differed in numerous ways that may have contributed to better performance in the dark (e.g. in whether the hidden objects made sound, in the number of familiarization trials with visible objects). The current studies controlled such incidental differences between search tasks, so that they could be directly compared. Six-and-a-half-month-olds received four types of test events, in which either a toy or no toy was presented and then hidden in the dark or under a cloth in the light. Infants searched more often on toy than no-toy trials in the dark than with a cloth. The advantage in searching for hidden objects in the dark thus appears to be genuine. Theoretical implications are discussed

Familiarity breeds searching. Infants reverse their novelty preferences when reaching for hidden objects.

What infants appear to know depends heavily on how they are tested. For example, infants seem to understand object permanence (what objects continue to exist when no longer perceptible) within the first few months of life when this understanding is assessed through looking measures, but not until several months later when it is assessed through search measures. One explanation of such results is that infants gradually develop stronger representations of objects through experience, and that stronger representations are required for some tasks than for others. The current study confirms one prediction from this account: Stronger representations of familiar objects (relative to novel objects) should support greater sensitivity to their continued existence. After seeing objects hidden, infants reached more for familiar than novel objects, in striking contrast to their robust novelty preferences with visible objects. Theoretical implications concerning the origins of knowledge are discussed

Thermoeconomic approach for the analysis of control system of energy plants

In this paper a thermoeconomic approach is applied to the dynamic model of a Power System in order to investigate the effects of the control system on the primary energy consumption and on the economic costs of the product. To achieve this objective, various control strategies are compared when variations of the operation condition, due to some internal or external causes, are produced. These variations cause the intervention of the control system, which rearranges the operating condition in order to have the controlled quantities within acceptable ranges. Generally the plant efficiency changes, depending on the selected strategy. A microturbine is considered as the case study. The analysis here proposed allows one to quantify the effect of the control on the performance variation of the components. The approach associates an exergetic cost and a thermoeconomic cost to the control system operation, which expresses the additional resource (primary energy and economic resources) consumptions that may be associated to the control. The impact on the initial and final steady states as well as the transient evolution are considered. This can be usefully applied to improve energy system operation acting on the control system, both in the off-design steady states and transient operations. In the particular application considered in this paper, reductions of about 8% in fuel consumption and 5% in the total costs are achieved. Concerning transient operation, it is shown that the control system can produce large variation in the operation cost

Object permanence in five-and-a-half-month-old infants?

Event Set x Event Set designs were used to study the rotating screen paradigm introduced by Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985). In Experiment 1, 36 5 1/2 month-old infants were habituated to a screen rotating up to 180 degrees up to and seemingly through a block. All infants were then tested on the same 3 events and also a screen rotating 120 degrees with no block. The results indicate that infants are using novelty and familiarity preference to determine their looking times. To confirm this, in Experiment 2, 52 5 1/2-month-old infants were familiarized on either 3 or 7 trials to a screen rotating 180 degrees with no block or a screen rotating 120 degrees with no block. All infants were then tested on the same test events as Experiment 1. Infants with fewer familiarization trials were more likely to prefer the familiar rotation event. The results of these 2 experiments indicate that infants did not use the possibility or impossibility of events but instead used familiarity or novelty relations between the habituation events and the test events to determine their looking times, and suggest that the Baillargeon et al study should not be interpreted as indicating object permanence or solidity knowledge in young infants