baillargeons explanations of early infant abilities

• knowledge of physical world

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

  • children understand how the world works so expect certain things to happen, if they don't happen the child reacts 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 passing window and short one can't.
  • impossible condition: neither rabbit appeared at the window when moving
  • looked at impossible condition: 33 secs and possible 25 secs, shows they were surprised at impossible condition which contrast Piaget's finding of object permanence at less than 6 months
• what is innate physical reasoning system

  • gives infant basic understanding of the world to enable us to learn details about world more easily
  • becomes more sophisticates as we learn from experience
• what does having a physical reasoning system mean

  • that when infant shown impossible occurrence it draws their attention which helps hem develop understanding of physical world
  • infants identify event categories which shows how objects interact
• baillergeon strengths

  • VOE provides better understanding of infants, Piaget assumed when they didn't look for object they thought it wasn't there but they may have been uninterested
  • challenged Piaget's findings of age of object permanence by finding that children may have object permanence less than 6 months
• baillargeon limitations

  • low validity: may look at impossible event longer as it's different not because they believe its impossible