Three studies were conducted to test Bower's conjecture that infants' Stage IV object permanence difficulties can be attributed to their interpretation of occlusion as replacement. In the first study, several types of barriers (upright screen, inverted cup, upright box, cloth) were used in a standard object permanence procedure. The search results partially supported an order of difficulty predicted by Bower's explanation. The infants were consistently delayed, however, in retrieving objects from inside the upright box. The remaining studies were conducted to determine why inside the upright box proved extraordinarily difficult. The second study investigated the role of previous training and found none. In the third study, barrier size was varied. Only the smaller box had the lower successful retrieval rate. Measures of looking and mode of manual search indicated that the infants looked appropriately but did not know how to search inside the small box. An argument is made for standardizing barriers and for measuring looking and searching patterns as well as successful retrieval in object permanence studies.
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