Baillargeon

• Key ideas

  • Previous research underestimated new borns abilities
  • children in the sensorimotor stage were better developed
• Define habituation

  • This is said to occur when babies look away from an object, as it is no longer seen as new or unique
  • the baby is now comfortable/used to the object being there
• Define nativism

  The idea that babies are born with some innate abilities
• What is the physical reasoning system (PRS)

  • PRS is the basic understanding that infants have of the physical world and the ability to learn easily
  • the nature of the PRS means that they are prone to paying attention to new events as it can help them develop their understanding
  • e.g object permanence helps them to learn about occlusion (an object still exists even when you can’t see it)
• What is the study

  Violation of expectation
• What was the aim of the violation of expectation study

  To provide an explanation for early infant abilities
• What was the sample of the violation of expectation study

  24 infants, aged 5 - 6 months
• What was the procedure of the violation of expectation study

  • Familiarisation event - the infants were shown a small and tall rabbit passing behind a screen, where the object would disappear them reappear
  • test events (expected and unexpected)
  • expected - a small rabbit would pass behind the screen and it wouldn’t be shown when it passed the screen as it was too small
  • unexpected - a tall rabbit would pass being a screen but it could also not been seen when it passed the window even thought it was tall enough
• What were the findings of the violation of expectation study

  • The infants spent longer looking at the unexpected event (33 seconds) than the expected event (25 seconds)
  • this suggests that they were surprised by the unexpected event, which means they must have known that the tall rabbit should have been visible when it passed the window
• What were the limitations

  • Counterpoint - Piaget
  • may not be object permanence
• What was the strength

  Validity of the violation of expectation experiment
• Evaluation - validity of the VoE experiment

  • The method removes the confounding variable
  • the amount of time that the child looks at the object is only measured by the direct contact not whilst the child looks away when distracted
  • Piaget stated that once a child looks away from an object they no longer think it exists
• Evaluation - counterpoint

  • Piaget pointed out that although the children are paying attention it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand it
  • their longer response to the unexpected event doesn’t represent a change in their cognitive ability
• Evaluation - may not be object permanence

  • It is assumed that the response made to the violation of expectation is linked to the unexpectedness of the event
  • all it shows is that babies find certain objects more interesting
  • it is inferring a link between the response and object permanence