Object Permanence in Animals
Experiments in non-human primates suggest that monkeys can track the displacement of invisible targets, that invisible displacement is represented in the prefrontal cortex, and that development of the frontal cortex is linked to the acquisition of object permanence. Various evidence from human infants is consistent with this. For example, formation of synapses in the frontal cortex peaks during human infancy, and recent experiments using near infrared spectroscopy to gather neuroimaging data from infants suggests that activity in the frontal cortex is associated with successful completion of object permanence tasks.
However, many other types of animals have been shown to have the ability for object permanence. These include dogs, cats, and a few species of birds such as the carrion crow and food-storing magpies. Dogs are able to reach a level of object permanence that allows them to find food after it has been hidden beneath one of two cups and rotated 90°. Similarly, cats are able to understand object permanence but not to the same extent that dogs can. Cats fail to understand that if they see something go into an apparatus in one direction that it will still be there if the cat tries to enter from another direction. A longitudinal study found that carrion crows were able to reach the same level of object permanence as humans. There was only one task, task 15, that the crows were not able to master. Another study tested the comparison of how long it took food-storing magpies to develop the object permanence necessary for them to be able to live independently. The research suggests that these magpies followed the a very similar pattern as human infants while they were developing.
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Famous quotes containing the words object, permanence and/or animals:
“Did men but consider that the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so many sensations in their minds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never fall down and worship their own ideas; but rather address their homage to that eternal invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. We love to see animals fighting, not the victor raving over the vanquished.... It is the same in gambling, and the same in the search for truth.... We never seek things for themselves—what we seek is the very seeking of things.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)