A distraction task as an assessment of object permanence

Object permanence, as expressed on a task which involves distracting the infant, was tested with infants ranging between 8 and 16 months of age. For this task, the attention of an infant who was playing with one toy was diverted to another. While the infant examined the second toy, the first was covered. Finally, the second toy was removed and the infant was allowed to search for the first. A comparison with performance on multiple visible-displacement, single invisible-displacement, and multiple invisible-displacement tasks showed that the distraction task fell between the two invisible-displacement tasks in difficulty. This distraction task appears to have heuristic value, since it facilitates separation of search strategies from the infant's understanding of the adult's role as an active agent in an object's disappearance.