Theory, data, and mathematical models presented suggest that perceptual processing may be crucial in young infant cognition. Prior results indicating early or innate physical knowledge are reinterpreted. Assumptions that young infants use higher level cognitive processes to infer, reason, believe, and so on are challenged in favor of perceptual processes and the effects of novelty and familiarity. The 2-test habituation design that compares looking at the "possible" with looking at the "impossible" and the problems of that design are considered. The authors' approach, based on regression analysis of Event Set X Event Set factorial designs, eliminates those problems, refines gauging the contribution of various variables, quantifies these contributions with standard parameter estimation, unconfounds the crucial variables, and tests which variables are responsible for looking time differences. Data are presented that support the perceptual processing perspective. Application of the new design to 2 seminal studies of infant cognition are suggested.

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 S%-month-old infants were habituated to a screen rotating 180" with no block, a screen rotating 120" up to a block, or a screen rotating 180" up to and seemingly through a block. All infants were then tested on the same 3 events and also a screen rotating 120" 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 S%-month-old infants were familiarized on either 3 or 7 trials to a screen rotating 180" with no block or a screen rotating 120" with no block. All infants were then tested on the same test events as in 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.In the decade and a half since its publication, the study of object permanence in 5-month-old infants by Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985) has been fiequently cited in research and theoretical articles and plays a supportive role in vari-Requests for reprints should be sent to Richard S. Bogartz,

Older children with online schooling requirements, unsurprisingly, were reported to have increased screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in many countries. Here, we ask whether younger children with no similar online schooling requirements also had increased screen time during lockdown. We examined children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in a large cohort (n = 2209) of 8-to-36-month-olds sampled from 15 labs across 12 countries. Caregivers reported that toddlers with no online schooling requirements were exposed to more screen time during lockdown than before lockdown. While this was exacerbated for countries with longer lockdowns, there was no evidence that the increase in screen time during lockdown was associated with socio-demographic variables, such as child age and socio-economic status (SES). However, screen time during lockdown was negatively associated with SES and positively associated with child age, caregiver screen time, and attitudes towards children’s screen time. The results highlight the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on young children’s screen time.

What infants appear to know depends heavily on how they are tested. For example, infants seem to understand object permanence (that 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.

Infants' transfer of information from pictures to objects was tested by familiarizing 9-month-olds (N = 31) with either a color or black-and-white photograph of an object and observing their preferential reaching for the real target object versus a distractor. One condition tested object recognition by keeping both objects visible, and the other tested object representation by hiding both objects. On visible trials, infants reached more for the distractor, indicating they recognized the target object from its picture. On hidden trials, infants reached more for the target object, suggesting they formed a continued representation of the object based on its picture. Photograph color had no effect. Infants thus show picture-to-object transfer by 9 months with preferential reaching, even with black-and-white pictures.