Talk:Object permanence/GA2

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Muboshgu (talk · contribs) 18:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm busy today and likely too busy tomorrow to perform this review, but I will have it done by Friday at the latest. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I've started to review the article. I'll keep adding to my comments as I find things... – Muboshgu (talk) 20:53, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Review


 * An image would be nice. There should be freely available images that can illustrate some of these points.
 * Formatting issues...
 * Per WP:ORDINAL, numbers from zero through nine should be spelled out, rather than digitized. In the lead, "8 and 12 months" would be better expressed as "eight and twelve months".
 * Per MOS:HEAD, section titles should be in sentence case, not title case
 * For simplicity sake, "Object Permanence in More Than Humans" is not a good section title. Also, per MOS:HEADINGS, section titles shouldn't refer to the title of the article. I'm not sure if it can be avoided in this case, but for "Stages of Object Permanance", it should simply be titled "Stages"
 * In "Contradicting Evidence" and "Stages in Object Permanence", those should be numbered lists, formatted according to MOS:LIST.
 * Trouble with references:
 * Some references are duplicated (I see Baillargeon and DeVos, 1991 in #8 and #9).
 * You have some formatted as scientific citations, with others in the tags.
 * Cite #4 is improperly formatted.
 * Some of the cited articles don't exist in the references, such as Lucas and Uzgiris, 1977. I haven't searched for them all yet, so there might be more, and I will check it before the review closes, pass or fail.
 * A "conclusion" section is against Wikipedia's S.O.P. I understand that this is a class project, and that psychology papers require conclusion sections, but on Wikipedia, we don't do that. Any information should be migrated to appropriate sections, or deleted if its duplicative.
 * The "See also" section is meant only for related links that aren't included in the text of an article. Theory of cognitive development is in both the text and "see also", so it should be removed from the latter.
 * The sentence "Infants that have not yet developed might appeared confused. [5]"...
 * Have not yet developed what? I know what, but the sentence needs a slight rewrite for grammar
 * The space should be removed between the period and the reference.
 * That "space between the reference" issue needs to be resolved at "magpies.[18] [19] [20] [21]" too.
 * The "Recent Studies" section needs to be wikified. There should be links to relevant items that have their own articles (like Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc.) and it should be broken into more than one paragraph for readability.
 * "External links" section is empty. If there's nothing to include as an external link, it shouldn't be a section.
 * For organization's sake and the flow of the article, I think the "Stages" section should come before the "criticisms section".
 * The "Early research" and "Recent studies" sections could use some rewriting. The prose is more appropriate for a school term paper than for an encyclopedia. It should be written in a more clear, concise manner, leaving out details that would be in a term paper.


 * Fixes

Hello, thank you for the wonderful fixes. I have done all of them except for the last one(fixing the prose of the two sections) to the best of my abilities.

Thank you again, Fredodin (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

One of my group members fixed the "Early research" and "Recent studies" to make them sound more like an encyclopedia and now I am going to try and add a picture to help the page. Fredodin (talk) 02:34, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Great. I'll take a look in a minute and see if there's anything else I'd like to see changed. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

You all have made good progress. It is a good sign that I don't have any particular criticisms about the scientific content. That all seems to be in order. Here are further comments:
 * The peekaboo image is great. However, the caption is unsourced. You either should source the caption, or put the caption in the text as welll and source it there.
 * "Bower (1974) demonstrated object permanence in 3-month-olds.[9][10] showed infants a toy car..." This should be fixed.
 * Also in the "contradictory evidence" section, it says: "Also in the 1991 study the researchers..." What 1991 study?
 * That whole paragraph is a bit long and should be broken in two for readability.
 * The two things I specifically said should be wikilinked in the "recent studies" section were linked, but others were not. I did say "etc." Blindness and deafness should be wikilinked. Language acquisition too. There might be others to wikilink that I'm not mentioning at the moment.
 * In fact, there are more things in different parts of the article. "Motor development" in the lead, for instance, should be a wikilink.

I think that I fixed everything as best I could. If you find anymore problems please let me know so I can fix them. Thanks again, Fredodin (talk) 03:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

There are instances of citation overkill in this article. It's not useful to a general reader to have more than two citations strung together at the end of a sentence. They won't know which reference goes with which fact in the sentence. Use citation bundling if it's important to include all the references for that sentence. AstroCog (talk) 13:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment from another editor

There has to be a place in this article where developmental psychology and psychology can be linked, so they then don't have to be relegated to sit in the "See also" section.

Quotes should be used when they represent a unique way of saying something, or when they represent someone's personal opinion. When I read, "while object permanence alone may not predict communicative achievement, object permanence along with several other sensorimotor milestones, plays a critical role in, and interacts with, the communicative development of children with severe disabilities'" I see a quote that should just be paraphrased. Don't use quotes to replace your own writing.AstroCog (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your help! I was able to fix the citation overkill and added the developmental psychology and psychology into the article, but I feel that the direct quote captures the understanding of what the author is trying to say better than if I were to try paraphrase or rewrite in my own words that it would lose its effect. Fredodin (talk) 16:21, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you've done a good job responding to my comments, and I don't see anything else pressing. There are other comments I would make if this was a featured article review, but I believe this sufficiently meets GA requirements. Well done. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:51, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In the section comparing children with the disabilities to non-disabled children, there is a statement that the disabled children only performed worse on tasks involving socialization. This is immediately followed by a statement saying the disabled children performed worse on non-socialization tasks. This makes no sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.95.5 (talk) 18:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)