Babies are able to recognise real objects from pictures well before their first birthday, scientists have discovered.

According to their findings, babies can make the connection between the two from as early as nine months.

"The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant. For parents and educators, these findings suggest that, well before their first birthdays and their first words, babies are capable of learning about the real world indirectly from picture books, at least those that have very realistic images like photographs," noted Dr Jeanne Shinskey of the University of London.

The scientists from the UK and the US studied 30 infants aged eight and nine months. The babies were shown life-sized photos of a toy for around one minute. They were then placed in front of the toy that had been shown in the picture and another toy, to see which they would reach for first.

If the toys were placed in a clear container, the babies tended to reach for the other toy. The scientists said that this suggests that the infants recognised the toy from the picture, but were not as interested in it because the novelty had worn off.

If the toys were placed in containers that the children could not see into, they tended to reach for the toy they had seen the picture of. This suggests that they had developed a ‘continued mental idea' of the item.

"These findings show that one brief exposure to a picture of a toy affects infants' actions with the real toy by the time they reach nine-months-old. It also demonstrates that experience with a picture of something can strengthen babies' ideas of an object so they can maintain it after the object disappears - so out of sight is not out of mind," Dr Shinskey said.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Child Development.