rdfs:comment
| - In psychology, object permanence is the ability to recognize that an object continues to exist even when you cannot see, hear, or touch it. In Real Life, everyone eventually develops this trait, usually between 8 and 12 months of age. Compare Living Motion Detector for when object permanence depends on the motion of the object. Do not confuse it with No Ontological Inertia, which is when an object really is impermanent. Examples
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abstract
| - In psychology, object permanence is the ability to recognize that an object continues to exist even when you cannot see, hear, or touch it. In Real Life, everyone eventually develops this trait, usually between 8 and 12 months of age. In fiction, it doesn't always work like that. A good source of comedy is to have a person who should have developed this trait behave as though they never did. An object can be in plain view one second and then hidden from view the next and this person will react as though the object is no longer there, even though it hasn't actually been removed from the room. In a more serious usage, inducing this can be a kind of superpower in fantasy/sci-fi stories. Use of this trope will often show a severe failure of logic. Characters lacking object permanence will have, at the very least, a normal memory, even though the ability to remember anything depends on object permanence. If you believed that this article only existed while you were reading it, you would find yourself unable to remember it later. This is not a problem in fiction land. Compare Living Motion Detector for when object permanence depends on the motion of the object. Do not confuse it with No Ontological Inertia, which is when an object really is impermanent. Examples
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