Baillargeon and infant abilities

    Cards (4)

    • Baillargeon and Graber VOE research (PROCEDURE)
      • Studied 24 infants, aged 5-6 months
      • Showed a tall and short rabbit passing a window
      • POSSIBLE CONDITION- tall rabbit can be seen passing window but short cannot
      • IMPOSSIBLE CONDITION- neither rabbit can be seen passing window
      • This was to test if children had a good understanding on how the world worked, the impossible condition violates their expectations of seeing the rabbits pass the window
    • Baillargeon and Graber VOE findings
      • Impossible- infants looked avg 33.07s
      • Possible- 25.11s
      • difference of 7.96s in attention
      • Interpreted as infants were surprised and therefore continued looking for the rabbit to pass as expected
      • This suggests they have an understanding of object permanence
    • PRS is universal- Hespos and van Marle
      • Without learning and experience we all have a good understanding of the properties of physical objects
      • E.g. letting go of keys, they will fall to the floor
      • This understanding requires our physical reasoning system and this is universal
      • PRS is innate otherwise we would expect cultural differences in understanding (lack of evidence to suggest this)
      • Strength of Baillargeon as she believed our PRS was universal/innate
    • What is a strength with Baillargeon's research against Piaget?
      • VOE research is a better method for investigating a child's understanding of the world
      • Piaget assumed when an infant's attention was shifted from the object it no longer knew it existsed
      • It could have been that they lost interest
      • Baillargeon eliminates this confounding variable due to children looking longer (7.96s)
      • Better validity than Piaget
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