ABSTRACT
The last 2 decades have witnessed an abundance of studies on infant cognition. There is now growing evidence that infants show precocious intuitions about several physical phenomena, such as support, collision, and occlusion (Baillargeon, 1995). Most of this research has focused on the content of infants’ knowledge, although there has been recent interest in addressing the structural and developmental aspects of early physical reasoning (Baillargeon, 1995; Spelke, Breilinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992). One current issue is whether infants’ understanding of physical objects constitutes an early theory of objects or a simple perceptual organization of sensory experiences. Another issue is whether infants are born with substantive beliefs about objects or with constrained mechanisms that guide their acquisition of knowledge about objects (Baillargeon, Kotovsky, & Needham, 1995).
