Baillargeon's explanations of infant abilities

• Early research on knowledge of the physical world

  • Recall Piaget's ideas about the sensorimotor stage, Piaget believed babies less than 8 months have a primitive understanding of the nature of the physical world.
  • Some were critical as it is possible that younger babies do not pursue a hidden object because they don't have the motor skills.
  • Baillargeon in the 1980s pointed out that alternative research methods show that younger babies have a better-developed understanding of the physical world. Called the Violation of expectation.
• Violation of Expectation research

  • Baillargeon (2004) explains VOE as follows, in a typical experiment, infants see two test events: an expected event, which is consistent with the expectation examined in the experiment, and an unexpected event, which violates this expectation.
  • VOE method is used to text object permanence, infants will typically see two or more conditions in which objects pass in and out of sight.
  • In a control condition the object behaves as a person with object permanence would expect.
• Procedure and Findings

  • Procedure- Baillargeon and Graber (1987) showed 24 infants, 5-6 months, a tall and short rabbit pass behind a screen with a window. In the possible condition the tall rabbit can be seen passing the window but the short rabbit can't. In the impossible condition neither rabbit could be seen.
  • Findings- Infants looked for an average of 33.07 seconds at the impossible event as compared to 25.11 seconds in the possible condition. The researchers interpreted this as meaning that the infants were surprised at the impossible condition.
• Other studies

  • Baillargeon and Graber's study is an example of an occlusion study, in which one object occludes another. VOE experiments have also been used to test infant understanding of containment and support.
  • Containment is the idea that when an object is seen to enter a container is should still be there when the container is opened.
  • Support is the idea that an object should fall when unsupported but not when it is on a horizontal surface.
  • In all these cases infants should have shown that they pay more attention to unexpected events and so appear to have good understanding of the physical world (Baillargeon 2008)
• Baillargeon's theory of infant physical reasoning

  -Baillargeon (2012) propose that humans are born with a physical reasoning system. We are hard-wired with both a basic understanding of the physical world and the ability to learn more details easily.

  -Initially we have a primitive awareness of the physical properties of the world and this becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience.

  -One aspect of the world of which we have a crude understanding from birth is object persistence. Roughly the same concept of Piaget's object permanence, the idea that an object remains in existence and doesn't spontaneously alter in structure.
• Baillargeon's theory of infant physical reasoning P2

  -NOT DONE