Baillargeon

Question 1

What is the violation of expectation technique?

Answer 1

research used to investigate infant abilities by comparing infant expected and unexpected reactions. it says children will look longer at things they haven’t seen before. consistent results against Piaget’s ideas of object permanence age range

Question 2

What is the Core knowledge theory?

Answer 2

CKT believes humans have innate systems that represent objects and their relationships with each other, including their boundaries, allowing them to learn quickly from environmental experiences, which has an evolutionary survival value

Question 3

What is the physical reasoning system?

Answer 3

an innate mechanism that helps us interpret and learn from experiences, helping us learn about the physical world more quickly

Question 4

A03 strengths of Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant abilities

Answer 4

-Baillargeon 1987 - truck + block
-Aguiar + Baillargeon 1999 - Minnie mouse study
-challenges Piaget by saying object permanence is innate
-research has face validity
-VoE technique became a paradigm
-Consistent results supporting CKT

Question 5

A03 negatives of Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant abilities

Answer 5

-dependent on inferences
-Cashon + Cohen 2000 - novel vs impossible events against CKT
-claims PRS is innate yet tested it on 2 1/2 month olds
-problematic to investigate infants as they cant verbally communicate
-Schoner + Thelen 2004 - VoE studies just show infants know the difference between possible and impossible scenarios, not that they’re surprised