AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Understanding that people and items still exist even when they aren’t in view is an important concept that your baby will learn during their first year of life.

Detailed explanation-2: -But by the time your little one is about 8 months old, if not even earlier, he’ll start to understand an important concept: that favorite toys, people and other things still exist even when they’re not in plain view. That awareness is known as object permanence, and it represents a huge leap in your baby’s thinking.

Detailed explanation-3: -Object permanence is the concept that objects continue to exist even when they’re not in sight. Early on, babies don’t yet have the cognitive skills to understand that what they can’t see still exists. For young infants, the world around them contains only what they can see in front of them at any given moment.

Detailed explanation-4: -Object permanence features prominently in the first of four stages of cognitive development that Piaget describes. During the sensorimotor stage, which spans from birth to around 24 months, babies learn about the world through sensory and physical exploration of their environment.

Detailed explanation-5: -For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it. At the beginning of this stage the child behaves as if the toy had simply disappeared.