Experience with malleable objects influences shape-based object individuation by infants

• At 8.5 months, experience with changeable shapes influences object individuation.
• Infants use shape to individuate objects after experiencing objects that are rigid.
• Infants do not rely on shape to individuate after experiencing malleable objects.
• Infants generalize knowledge of shape's malleability to novel objects and contexts.

Infants’ ability to accurately represent and later recognize previously viewed objects, and conversely, to discriminate novel objects from those previously seen improves remarkably over the first two years of life. During this time, infants acquire extensive experience viewing and manipulating objects and these experiences influence their physical reasoning. Here we posited that infants’ observations of object feature stability (rigid versus malleable) can influence the use of those features to individuate two successively viewed objects. We showed 8.5-month-olds a series of objects that could or could not change shape, then assessed their use of shape as a basis for object individuation. Infants who explored rigid objects later used shape differences to individuate objects; however, infants who explored malleable objects did not. This outcome suggests that the latter infants did not take into account shape differences during the physical reasoning task and provides further evidence that infants’ attention to object features can be readily modified based on recent experiences.