Reply to Baillargeon, Aslin, and Munakata

Our thematic collection relates to the nature of young infants’ representation in specific situations involving occluded objects. Piaget (1954) concluded that the infant has no representations at this age. Most now agree that conclusion was unwarranted, but researchers differ as to what, if any, representations exist of occluded objects (Baillargeon, 1993, 1995; Bogartz, Shinskey, & Speaker, 1997; Haith, 1988; Leslie, Xu, Tremoulet, & Scholl, 1998; Meltzoff & Moore, 1998). Obviously, issues concerning the nature of infant representation must be decided experimentally. It is therefore important to know how much confidence can INFANCY, 1(4), 479–490 Copyright © 2000, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.