Baillargeon's Early Infant Abilities AO1

Question 1

What is violation of expectation?

Answer 1

• An approach that investigates how infants understand the world
• If a child understands how the physical world operates then they will have expectations
• when expectations are broken the child will act surprise and therefore shows that they understand the world

Question 2

Describe Baillargeon’s violation of expectations study.

Answer 2

• she got 24 infants ages 5-6 months old
• they were shown a possible and impossible event
• they were shown a short and all bunny pass behind a screen with a window (occlusion)
• as a result they found that on average they looked at the possible event for 25.11 seconds and the impossible one for 33.07 seconds
• this shows that they were surprised by the impossible event as they looked longer and therefore according to violation of expectation they understand object perminance

Question 3

What Baillargeon’s opinions on Piaget’s theory of intellectual developement?

Answer 3

She believed that he was incorrect and that infants understand object perminance a lot sooner than 8-9 months like he suggested (5-6 months instead)

Question 4

Explain Baillargeon’s views.

Answer 4

• she believd that infants are born with an innate physical reasoning system, which developes over time
• from birth they undertstand object persistance and identify event catagories early in life (occlucsion)
• therefore 5-6 months they have a good understanding of object perminance

Question 5

What is a physical reasoning system?

Answer 5

a primitive understanding of the world’s physical properties

Question 6

What is object persistance?

Answer 6

the idea that objects exist and do not alter their structure

Question 7

What is occlusion?

Answer 7

blocking one object with another

this is seen in Baillargeon’s study