Baillargeon’s explanation of infant abilities AO3

• +Validity of VOE technique.

  Piaget made a flawed assumption that loss of interest in an object means the baby thinks it has ceased to exist. But the baby may have just been distracted. Baillargeon's VOE method controls for this because distraction would not affect the outcome. This control of a confounding variable means the VOE method has greater validity.
• +-Piaget claimed that acting in accordance with a principle is not the same as understanding it. Understanding involves being able to think about it consciously. This means that babies responses to unexpected conditions may not represent a change in their cognitive abilities.
• -Assumption that response to VOE is unexpectedness.

  A methodological issue is that babies' response may not 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 response and object permanence. Actually, the different levels of interest in the two different events may be for any number of reasons. This means that the VOE method may not be a valid way to study a very young child's understanding of the physical world.
• +PRS explains why physical understanding is universal. We all have a good understanding of the physical world regardless of culture and experience. So if we drop a key ring we all understand that it will fall to the ground. This universal understanding suggests that a basic understanding of the physical world is innate. Otherwise we would expect cultural and individual differences. This means that Baillargeon's PRS appears to be a good account of infant cognitive abilities.
• Credibility

  There have been challenges to the PRS.

  It is hard to determine Whether a baby is really responding to the unexpected nature of an event, and even if it is this may not indicate understanding. However, the idea of the PRS fits with what we already know about development of other visual systems e.g. distance perception. This means that the

  PRS is probably a credible idea.