Perseveration and Search on a Five-Choice Visible Displacement Hiding Task

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Abstract
Infants eight to ten months old (N = 30) were presented with visible displacement hiding tasks at a first location (A), a second location (B), and, finally, a third location (C). Infants had to choose among five alternative locations on each trial. Infants seldom searched perseveratively during either B or C hiding trials. Instead, infant search attempts tended to cluster around the actual hiding location during all hiding trials. The findings are interpreted as additional evidence for a memory explanation of infant search behavior. According to this hypothesis, infants comprehend the objective nature of spatial relationships but are less effective information processors than older individuals. These results challenge Piaget's notion that infants are incapable at this age of objectively representing the spatial location of hidden objects.