Three experiments are reported that examined infants' ability to use supports to retrieve objects that were visible or invisible, and covered or uncovered. Experiment 1* failed to confirm Frye's (1980) hypothesis that infants in Piaget's Stage 4 make search errors because they cannot adapt means‐ends coordinations. Infants given a search task made errors, but infants presented with an uncovered toy on a support adapted to a change of support with few errors. Experiment 2 showed that infants did make errors with supports if the toy was under an opaque cover, and an explanation was sought in Butterworth's (1977) claim that errors are produced by covering the toy, regardless of its visibility. Experiment 3 confirmed this proposal by showing that errors still occurred on the support task if the toy was under a transparent cover. These results replicated Butterworth's findings, and are interpreted as supporting his code conflict hypothesis. In particular, it is argued that certain features of the no‐cover support task help infants to coordinate egocentric and allocentric spatial codes and thus to avoid making errors.