baillargeon's explanation of early infant abilities

Question 1

what does Baillargeon’s explanation criticise?

Answer 1

Piaget’s stages of development
- that object permanence is developed at 8 months +

Question 2

what does Baillargeon argue?

Answer 2

• babies are born with an innate physical reasoning system, as demonstrated by violation of expectation research

Question 3

what is innate physical reasoning?

Answer 3

• the innate predisposition to pay attention to ‘surprising’ events which are not in line with our expectations, in an effort to improve and advance our understanding of the physical world

Question 4

how does Baillargeon criticise Piaget’s object permanence?

Answer 4

• the only reason babies don’t look for objects before 8 months of age is that they lack the motor abilities to do so
• not because they lack object permanence.

Question 5

how does Baillargeon explain ‘failure to search’ in Piaget’s experiment?

Answer 5

• lack of motivation
• lack of attention and interest
• inability to co-ordinate search movements

Question 6

what did Baillargeon use in her research?

Answer 6

the habituation paradigm

Question 7

what is the habituation paradigm?

Answer 7

• habituation is the decrease in response to a stimulus as a result of repeated presentations of that stimulus (familiarity)
• infants will spend more time looking at new things
• infants are shown a stimulus until they look away
• they are then shown another stimulus similar to the first
• differences in ‘looking time’ show that the infant can tell the difference between the two stimuli

Question 8

what is violation of expectation research?

Answer 8

infants will look at things that don’t fit their understanding of the physical world (i.e. things that violate their expectations) for longer than things that do fit their understanding of the physical world (i.e. that are in line with their expectations).

Question 9

outline the procedure of Baillargeon’s VOE research (carrot experiment)

Answer 9

• 3-month infants habituated to an item
• 2 independent groups; C1 shown ‘possible’ event, C2 shown ‘impossible’ event
• C1: a short rabbit cannot be seen passing behind a window, but a tall one can.
• C2: neither rabbit can be seen passing behind a window. this is ‘impossible’ because it is not consistent with the idea of object permanence i.e. an understanding that the tall rabbit is taller than the
  window, and so should be visible.

Question 10

outline the findings/ conclusions of Baillargeon’s VOE experiment

Answer 10

• infants, on average, looked at the impossible condition for 8s longer compared to the possible condition.
• researchers concluded that the infants believed that the rabbit continued to exist behind the screen, assumed its height stayed the same, expected the tall rabbit to appear in the window and were surprised when it didn’t
• results confirm that infants as young as 3.5m have object permanence

Question 11

what did Baillargeon find about the different ages of object permanence?

Answer 11

• 4 months: notice if a train changes to a car in a tunnel
• 7.5 months: notice if a spotty train becomes striped
• 11.5 months: notice if a train changes colour in a tunnel

Question 12

what were the conclusions of Baillargeon’s explanation?

Answer 12

• children are born with an innate physical reasoning system that the child applies when it encounters things in the real world
• children then build their understanding of the properties of objects from their experiences, e.g. they develop the idea of persistence (objects continue to exist in time and space)

Question 13

W Baillargeon: non-scientific research

Answer 13

ID: Baillargeon’s research can be argued as being non-scientific
Q: the distinction drawn between behavioural response and behavioural understanding is not the same (Bremner)
EX: for example, just because an infant looks at the impossible condition for longer, does not necessarily mean that they understand the differences
in height and appearance of the different objects, thus also not being able to consciously reason about it.
AN: therefore, this means that Baillargeon may have overestimated the significance of her results, and so
reached potentially incorrect causal conclusions.

Question 15

S Baillargeon: scientific research

Answer 15

ID: however, Baillargeon’s research can be considered scientific
Q: this is due to the use of controlled and standardised methods
EX: for example, Baillargeon’s research has high population validity as she recruited ppt’s through birth announcements in the press, which is better than selecting ppt’s for specific traits. furthermore, she used 2 observers in every condition of her lab experiments, using a double-blind design to achieve 100% inter-rater reliability scores.
AN: therefore, due to the use of standardised research, Baillargeon’s findings can be considered scientific, further increasing internal validity

Question 16

S Baillargeon: research support (Kaufman)

Answer 16

ID: a strength of Baillargeon’s explanation is that there is research to support her findings
Q: empirical evidence from brain scans support object permanence as an earlier function
EX: for example, Kaufman used brain imaging on VOE tasks and found increased activity in the temporal lobes of infants as they looked longer at the impossible event
AN: therefore, this supports the idea that children have achieved object permanence before the age of 8-12 months, increasing reliability of Baillargeon’s research.