Object permanence in newborn chicks is robust against opposing evidence

TL;DR

This study shows that newborn chicks possess an innate object permanence ability that remains stable even when exposed to conflicting evidence, indicating a robust, possibly prenatal, foundation of this perceptual skill.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that object permanence in chicks is innate and resistant to experiential counterevidence, challenging views of flexible learning in early perceptual development.

Findings

Chicks succeed in object permanence tasks despite impoverished rearing conditions.

Chicks ignore violations of object continuity even after extensive exposure.

Object permanence appears to be a prenatal, hardwired perceptual skill.

Abstract

Newborn animals have advanced perceptual skills at birth, but the nature of this initial knowledge is unknown. Is initial knowledge flexible, continuously adapting to the statistics of experience? Or can initial knowledge be rigid and robust to change, even in the face of opposing evidence? We address this question through controlled-rearing experiments on newborn chicks. First, we reared chicks in an impoverished virtual world, where objects never occluded one another, and found that chicks still succeed on object permanence tasks. Second, we reared chicks in a virtual world in which objects teleported from one location to another while out of view: an unnatural event that violates the continuity of object motion. Despite seeing thousands of these violations of object permanence, and not a single non-violation, the chicks behaved as if object permanence were true, exhibiting the same behavior as chicks reared with natural object permanence events. We conclude that object permanence develops prenatally and is robust to change from opposing evidence.