Baillargeon

• What did Baillargeon do?


  Found evidence for object permanence in infants younger than the sensorimotor stage
• What did Baillargeon do to research violation of expectations?


  Infants are shown a tall and short carrot pass behind a window, with or without a screen
• How long did the infants look at the possible condition?

  25 seconds
• How long did the infants look at the impossible condition?

  33 seconds
• What did Baillargeon conclude?

  The babies must have expected the tall carrot to reappear at the other end
• What is innate in children according to Baillargeon?

  Physical reasoning system
• What is the physical reasoning system?


  An innate understanding of the physical world, including some understanding of object permanence
• What is Baillargon’s research into theory of mind?

  False belief task

  • A woman shows a preference for a blue haired doll over a skunk toy
  • The woman leaves and the baby watches the skunk toy getting placed into a box with blue hair sticking out of it
  • The doll is placed in a box next to it
  • The woman comes back and immediately looks in the box without the blue hair sticking out of it
  • Babied as young as 14 months showed surprise at this, so they understand the woman should have a false belief that the doll was in the skunk box
• What are some positives of Baillargeons research?

  • Better test of understanding than Piaget - no artefact of methodology
  • PRS explains why physical understanding is universal - Hespos and Marle (2012) say we have a good understanding of physical properties of objects regardless of experience
• What does Bremner argue about Baillargeons task?

  Behavioural response is not understanding. We don’t know whether the baby is using conscious thinking to reason about the world
• What is an issue with Baillargeon’s study?

  Baby gaze may not be an accurate measurement. We don’t know if they are actually surprised