Baillargeon's explanation of infant abilities

• Baillargeon suggested that young babies had a better understanding of the physical world than Piaget had suggested. She proposed the lack of understanding of object permanence could be explained differently. For example young babies might lack the necessary motor skills to pursue a hidden object or they may just lose interest because they are easily distracted.
• Baillargeon explained violation of expectation as follows: in a typical experiment babies 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.
• Baillargeon and Graber showed 24 babies, aged 6 months, a tall and a short rabbit passing behind a screen with a window. In the familiarisation event, a baby is shown a short rabbit and a tall rabbit disappearing as they pass behind a screen. In the test events there are two conditions - one where a short rabbit passes behind a screen and is not seen due to the height of the window. In the second condition, the tall rabbit would not be seen through the window as it passed from one side of the screen to the other. A baby who has object permanence should show surprise at this.
• Violation of expectation research:

  The babies looked for an average of 33.07 seconds at the unexpected event compared to 25.11 seconds at the expected event. The researchers interpreted this as meaning that the babies were surprised at the unexpected condition. This demonstrates a good understanding of object permanence.
• Baillargeon et al. proposed that humans are born with a physical reasoning system (PRS). In other words we are born hardwired with both a basic understanding of the physical world and also 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.
• The VOE method gets around an important limitation of Piaget's research - his assumption that when a baby loses interest in a hidden object they no longer believe it exists. Piaget's method can't distinguish between this and the possibility that the baby simply became distracted by other visual stimuli. The VOE method overcomes this because 'distraction' would not affect the outcome. In VOE the only thing being measured is how long the baby looks at the scene- looking away would not be recorded. This means Baillargeon's method has greater validity because a confounding variable is controlled
• However Piaget pointed out that acting in accordance with a principle is not the same as understanding it. Even if babies are able to recognise and devote more attention to unexpected events, this does not necessarily mean that they understand them. understanding something means it can be thought about consciously and applied to reasoning about different aspects of the world. This means that, even though babies do appear to respond to unexpected conditions, this may not represent a change in their cognitive abilities.
• A limitation of Baillargeon's research is the assumption that response to VOE is linked to unexpectedness and hence object permanence. Babies' response may not even be to the unexpectedness of the event. All VOE shows is that babies find certain events more interesting. We are inferring a link between this and response and object permanence. Although the different length of time spent looking at two different events may well reflect one being more interesting, this may not be because it's unexpected. It could be interesting for another reason.
• A strength of Baillargeon's explanation is its ability to explain universal understanding of the physical world. Hespos and van Marle point out, we all have a very good understanding of the basic characteristics of the physical world regardless of culture and personal experience. This universal understanding suggests that a basic understanding of the physical world is innate. If it were not innate we would expect significant cultural and individual differences and there is no evidence for these. This innate basic understanding of the physical world suggests Baillargeon's PRS is correct.