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Peekaboo (also spelled peek-a-boo) is a form of play played with an
Peekaboo (also spelled peek-a-boo) is a form of play played with an infant
In common terminology, a baby is the very young offspring of adult human beings, while infant (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'baby' or 'child') is a formal or specialised synonym. The terms may also be used to refer to juveniles of ...
. To play, one player hides their face, pops back into the view of the other, and says ''Peekaboo!'', sometimes followed by ''I see you!'' There are many variations: for example, where trees are involved, "Hiding behind that tree!" is sometimes added. Another variation involves saying "Where's the baby?" while the face is covered and "There's the baby!" when uncovering the face.
Peekaboo uses a joke-like structure: surprise, balanced with expectation.
Linguist Iris Nomikou has compared the game to a dialogue given the predictable back-and-forth pattern. Other researchers have called the game “protoconversation" – a way to teach an infant the timing and the structure of social exchanges.
Object permanence
Peekaboo is thought bydevelopmental psychologists
Development of the human body is the process of growth to maturity. The process begins with fertilization, where an egg released from the ovary of a female is penetrated by a sperm cell from a male. The resulting zygote develops through mitosis ...
to demonstrate an infant's inability to understand object permanence
Object permanence is the understanding that whether an object can be sensed has no effect on whether it continues to exist. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addres ...
. Object permanence is an important stage of cognitive development for infants. In early sensorimotor stages, the infant is completely unable to comprehend object permanence. Psychologist Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, ; ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.
...
conducted experiments with infants which led him to conclude that this awareness was typically achieved at eight to nine months of age. He said that infants before this age are too young to understand object permanence. A lack of object permanence can lead to A-not-B error
The A-not-B error is an incomplete or absent schema of object permanence, normally observed during the sensorimotor stage of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
A typical A-not-B task goes like this: An experimenter hides an attractive ...
s, where children reach for a thing at a place where it should not be.
See also
*Hide-and-seek
Hide-and-seek (sometimes known as hide-and-go-seek) is a children's game in which at least two players (usually at least three) conceal themselves in a set environment, to be found by one or more seekers. The game is played by one chosen playe ...
* List of children's games
This is a list of games that are played by children. Traditional children's games do not include commercial products such as board games but do include games which require props such as hopscotch or marbles (toys go in List of toys unless the ...
References
Further reading
*External links
{{Infants and their care Children's games