balliargeon

• Violation of expectations research

  Carrot study looked for longer in surprise events

  2 month old can experience object persistence
• strength

  • Film infants - establish inter rater reliability
  • Don't respond to demand characteristics/Hawthorne effect
• weakness

  • some issues with validity as they looked for longer but this may not indicate object persistence - interference may be wrong
• infants have physical reasoning system (PRS)


  INNATE! born with basic understanding as to how the world works
• violation of expectations (VOE) research - procedure

  • babies see 2 events (expected and unexpected)
  • unexpected violate infants' understanding of the world (testing object permanence)
  • examine if VOE has occurred by observing time babies looked for
• VOE - findings

  • looking for an average of 8 seconds longer in unexpected compared to expected
  • they were surprised so they must have object permanence
• object persistance


  if we cannot see something it doesn't change the structure
• strength

  good validity

  • babies in Piaget's research may have been distracted or lacked motor skills
  • Baillargeon was more accurately assessing surprise (indication of object permanence)
• weakness

  VOE may not be object permanence

  • all VOE says that infants find unexpected events more interesting
  • babies lack coordination (issues with observing infants)
• strength

  universality

  • explains universal behaviours
  • e.g. when keys are dropped they fall to the ground (understanding is innate)