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  • New babies are not sure what happens to objects (things) when they can't see them anymore.

  • Sky's mother keeps disappearing and reappearing (coming back). No wonder hide and seek is so much fun!

  • During their first year, however, babies will learn an important concept (idea), which is object permanence: objects still exist even if we can't see them.

  • When babies are Mia's age they know they have to look for an object, but they might not have everything else straight.

  • Ten-month-old Simon is about to make a very common mistake. Although he watched us place the toy plane under the white cloth,

  • he'll look for it where he last found it, not where he watched us hide it.

  • Woman: "Can you look at these two glasses. Do you think they have the same amount of juice in them?" Girl: "Yes."

  • Woman: "OK, now we're going to pour this juice into this glass. Now tell me which glass has the most juice in it."

  • This time, the child chooses the tall glass because the tall glass appears to have more juice in it.

  • In this example, the girl is asked which row of coins has more coins, or whether both rows have the same number of coins.

  • After counting the rows, she then says the rows have the same number of coins: "five coins in each row".

  • After the woman changes the coins, the child is asked again which row has more coins.

  • She chooses the first row and says it has more coins because there is more space at the beginning of the row.

  • The spacing between the coins makes the row appear to have more coins, making it look longer then the other.

  • In this third example, the child is asked if they have shared the biscuits fairly and equally.

  • She says no, because the woman has two and she has one.

  • After the woman breaks the little girl's biscuit in half, she is asked if this time they have shared the biscuits equally.

  • She says yes, they have, because now they both have two biscuits.

  • Woman: "Can you tell me what you see, when you look at that from where you are sitting?"

  • Boy: "I see a cat and a tree and a barn." Woman: "OK, now we are going to do the same thing."

  • "Can you tell me what you see when you look at it from that side?"

  • Boy: "I see an owl and a goat." Woman: "Is there anything else that you see?"

  • Boy: "A tree, and another little tree."

  • Woman: "Can you tell me what I see when I look at this from where I am sitting?"

  • Boy: "An owl, a goat, and a little tree and that and that and that..."

  • The woman asks the girl if she thinks there is the same amount of juice in both glasses. The girl says there is the same amount of juice.

  • The woman then takes a long glass and pours the juice from the short glass into the long glass.

  • She then asks the girl which glass has the most juice. The girl says both glasses have the same amount of juice.

  • The girl also says that just because the glass is tall and skinny doesn't mean it has more juice.

  • She says the tall glass has the same amount of juice, it's just that the short glass is wider (fat).

  • Woman: "If you hit a glass with a hammer the glass will break." Then the boy says he knew that.

  • Woman: "Then this one says Don hit a glass with a hammer." Then the boy says he knew that too.

  • So the woman asks what happened to the glass, and the boy says it broke, and it broke because the hammer is hard.

  • Woman: "If you hit a glass with a feather, the glass will break." Then the boy says, "No, it won't."

  • Woman: "This one says Don hit a glass with a feather, so what happened to the glass?" The boy says "Nothing happened."

  • Then the woman asks, "Why will nothing happen?" and the boy says, "Because the feather is soft."

  • Woman: "The rule is: if you hit a glass with a feather, the glass will break."

  • Woman: "The second one says that Don hit a glass with a feather. What happened to the glass?"

  • The teenager says, "The glass broke. Because the rule says, 'If you hit a glass with a feather, the glass will break'."

New babies are not sure what happens to objects (things) when they can't see them anymore.

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