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Is the concept of object still a suitable notion?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2005

Marie-Dominique Giraudo  and
Andrew B. Slifkin
Marie-Dominique Giraudo*
Affiliation:
UMR 6152 “Mouvement et Perception,” Faculté des Sciences du Sport, Université de la Méditerranée et Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 13288Marseille cedex 9, France
Andrew B. Slifkin*
Affiliation:
UMR 6152 “Mouvement et Perception,” Faculté des Sciences du Sport, Université de la Méditerranée et Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 13288Marseille cedex 9, France Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH44115
*
giraudo@laps.univ-mrs.fr
a.slifkin@csuohio.edu
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Abstract:

The model and framework presented in the target article by Thelen et al. is an interesting effort that is able to account for the contextual variability in the A-not-B performance of 7–12-month-old infants. In the process of developing their framework, the authors discounted the concept of object as a useful notion in discussions of A-not-B performance. For Piaget and other developmentalists, the main evidence for the acquisition of the concept of object was the disappearance of A-not-B errors after age 12 months. However, the Thelen et al. model makes predictions of A-not-B outcomes over a much shorter, trial-to-trial time scale. Given the mismatch in the time scales over which analyses in the two approaches have been based, we wonder if the challenge to the concept of object has been misplaced.

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 27 , Issue 5 , October 2004 , pp. 707 - 708
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

Commentary onEsther Thelen, Gregor Schöner, Christian Scheier, & Linda B. Smith (2001). The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching. BBS 24(1):1–86.