Baillargeon explanation of early infant abilities

• knowledge of physical world

  extent to which we understand the physical world works
• what is violation of expectation (VOE)

  >children understand how the world works so expect certain things to happen, if this doesn't happen then children react accordingly

  >developed VOE technique to compare infant reactions to expected and unexpected events and make inferences about cognitive abilities
• violation of expectation research

  >short and tall rabbit.

  > 5/6 month olds shown possible condition: tall rabbit can be seen to pass window and short one cannot. impossible condition: neither rabbit appeared at the window when moving.

  > looked at impossible condition 33 seconds and possible 25 seconds, shows they were surprised at impossible condition which contrasts Piagets finding of object permanence at less than 6 months
• what is innate physical reasoning system 


  >gives infant basic understanding of world to enable us to learn details about world more easily

  >becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience
• what does having a physical reasoning system mean


  >means that when infant shown impossible occurrence it draws their attention which helps them develop understanding of physical world

  >infants identify event categories which shows hoe objects interact
• strengths of baillargeon

  >violation of expectation provides better understanding of infants, Piaget assumed that when they didn't look for object they thought it wasn't there but they may have been uninterested

  >challenges Piagets findings of the age of object permanence by finding that children may have object permanence from under 6 months
• limitations of baillargeon

  >findings may not be a criticism of Piaget: investigating different processes as looking at impossible scene isn't the same as reasoning about physical world

  >lack of validity: may look at impossible event longer just because it is different not because they believe it is impossible