baillargeon

• 🔑 key assumptions

  • innate, early-developing physical reasoning systems
  • failure in piaget due to performance limitations
  • developing non-verbal and non-motoric methods
• 🔸 core knowledge theory

  • humans are born with innate systems for understanding the world
  • physical reasoning system
  • infants have expectations about how objects behave
• 🔸 core principles of physical understanding

  1. object persistence
  2. continuity & solidity
  3. support
  4. containment
  5. occlusion

  present from a young age and refined over time
• 📋 rationale behind violation of expectation

  • infants look longer at events that violate their expectation
  • insight into what infants understand about the world before they act on it
• 📖 key study - drawbridge study

  baillargeon et al

  • 3.5 month old infants shown a drawbridge rotating through a 180° arc
  • possible event - bridge stops when it hits the hidden box
  • impossible event - bridge continues to rotate, passing through the box

  infants look longer at the impossible event
• 📖 key study - container study

  baillargeon & graber

  • infants shown an object placed into a tall container
  • possible - object is visible
  • impossible - object disappears

  infants looker longer at the impossible event
• 🎯 implications of baillargeon's work

  • infants possess sophisticated cognitive abilities earlier than piaget suggests
  • nativist view of development
  • importance of age-appropriate and sensitive research methods
• ✅ strength of baillargeon - accurate

  provides more valid and sensitive measure

  • measured looking time which doesn't rely on motor ability
  • removes confounding variables like motor immaturity
  • challenge underestimation made by piaget
• ✅ strength for baillargeon - support

  support for innate cognitive structures

  • baillargeon - showed object permanence and solidity are present
  • supports core knowledge theory that humans have innate physical reasoning systems
  • biological foundation
• ❌ limitation of baillargeon - interpretation

  longer looking times doesn't indicate cognitive understanding

  • infants look longer at novel or visually stimulating events
  • VoE studies risk over-interpreting infant behaviour
  • validity of inferences is questioned