Baillargeon - Exp Early Infant Abilities

• In order to investigate infant understanding of the physical world, Baillargeon developed the violation of expectation research.
• Baillargeon's VOE experiment

  In a VOE experiment, infants see 2 events: expected (in line with the infant's expectations) and an unexpected event (violates their expectation). e.g. in one experiment the control condition (expected) consisted of a tall object being visible as it passed behind a screen with a window and the experimental condition (unexpected) involved the tall object not appearing when it passed behind a screen with a window.
• Baillargeon VOE experiment - Findings

  Infants on average stared at the unexpected event for 33.07 seconds whereas they looked at the expected event for an average of 25.11 seconds.
• Baillargeon VOE experiment - Shows/Conc

  As the infants stared longer at the unexpected event, it shows they must've known that the tall object continues to exist even when its behind the obstacle as they assumed the object would appear in the window. Shows they have some understanding of object permanence
• Baillargeon - Physical reasoning system - what

  Infants are born with a PRS which is a basic hard wired understanding of the physical world. These give infants a head start to understand other details. Argues that infants initially have a rudimentary understanding of physical properties of the world. This understanding refines and becomes sophisticated with exp
• Baillargeon - PRS - object permanence

  She argues that one of the understandings that PRS provides is object permanence - the ability to know that even though something can not be seen, it still exists.
• Baillargeon - PRS - function

  Function of the PRS is that it allows unexpected events to capture the attention of infants. Thus we are hard wired to pay attention to novel events. Helps us develop new knowledge of the physical world
• Baillargeon - EVALS

  • S - higher V compared to other research in the field such as Piaget's
  • S - concs regarding innate nature of cog abilities as well as how they get more sophisticated overtime is consistent with the general consensus in the field ( Pei et al)
  • W - criticised in terms of its measurement of the VOE through infant's stare
  • W - inadequate concs about object permanence
• S - higher V compared to other R in the field such as Piaget's. Baillargeon - <biased sample - used birth announcements in the local paper to pick Ps compared to Piaget - researched his kids, ∴ was biased. EVs such as communication with parents (kids were on their parent's lap during the task) controlled by asking parents to keep their eyes shut + not to communicate with the kids. Double blind design - observers didn't know whether the un/expected event was shown. S bc high levels of control allowed elimination of EVs in the procedure. ∴ more confident in C+E rs established in her VOE R. /V
• S - concs regarding innate nature of cog abilities as well as how they get more sophisticated overtime is consistent with the general consensus in the field. Difficult to directly test Baillargeon's idea of an innate PRS, concept itself is consistent with other findings within R into cog abilities. Pei et al found - infants can use crude patterns to judge distance at an early age and these patterns lay the foundation for the dev of a more sophisticated understanding of the world e.g. using texture to judge depth. S bc ...
• (S - concs regarding innate nature of cog abilities as well as how they get more sophisticated overtime is consistent with the general consensus in the field - Pei et al) .... S bc shows the innate ability of depth perception becomes more sophisticated with time. ∴ plausible that the innate PRS also becomes sophisticated with time. Inline with Baillargeon's theory. /v
• W - criticised in terms of its measurement of the VOE through infant's stare. Critics argue it's hard to judge what an infant is thinking based purely on duration of gaze. Baillargeon assumes infants staring longer at a scenario means their expectations have been violated but in reality may not be the case. Diff lengths of stare don't mean they see events as un/expected. May be other reasons for why they stare e.g. find the movement of the object more interesting in so called unexpected events. ∴ Baillargeon assuming staring means recognition of unexpected events could be a false conc. \v
• W - inadequate concs about object permanence. Bremner believes that Piaget may have been right about object permanence rather than Baillargeon. Piaget's concept of cog dev is that a child shouldn't just react to environmental changes but understand these changes and principles behind them to demonstrate cog dev. Baillargeon's R shows children may react to situations and be surprised by it before 8 months but this doesn't prove they understand why it's unexpected and ∴ doesn't prove they have object permanence. ∴ object permanence may come with ...
• ( W - inadequate concs about object permanence - Bremner)... ∴ object permanence may come with bio maturation instead of being innate. So Piaget's ideas of object permanence are perhaps more accurate. Suggests Baillargeon over estimated the cog abilities of infants. \V