object permanence

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the understanding, acquired by infants typically between four and eight months of age, that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible, audible, or otherwise perceptible; Jean Piaget identified the development of object permanence as a central achievement of the sensorimotor stage and used peek-a-boo games and hidden-object tasks to study when and how infants acquire it; more recent research using habituation paradigms has suggested that rudimentary object permanence may develop earlier than Piaget believed, sparking ongoing debate about the timeline and nature of early cognitive development