Biallergeon's violation of expectancy research Flashcards
Violation of expectancy research
Many researcher questioned the reliability of Piaget’s findings on object permanence.
Baillergeon argued that children as young as 3 understand that objects continue to exist when hidden.
She devised a technique to assess children’s understanding of the physical world.
VOE
A technique in which an expectancy of a physical event is created and an unexpected even occurs.
Consists of two stages and results are measure by the length of time infants stare at the events (assuming it means they are intrigued or surprised).
Drawbridge experiment
They conducted a drawbridge experiment to see if young infants had object permanence.
1st stage:
Infants were shown a drawbridge which began in a flat position and then rotated over 180 degrees and ended up back in a flat position.
This stimulus was repeated until it became familiar/ stopped responding to it.
2nd stage:
A block of wood was placed in the path of the drawbridge and it rotated over 112 degrees before resting on the block of wood and at the same time hiding it.
The children were randomly split into 2 groups.
Control group - shown an shown the expected event / drawbridge rested on the block
Experimental group - shown an unexpected event / drawbridge ‘passed through’ the block.
Findings of drawbridge
Infants looked significantly longer at the unexpected event.
They concluded that their attention was probably grabbed by the fact that the drawbridge managed to pass through a solid object like the wooden block. Which means they still remembered the wooden block after is was hidden.
Strengths
Baillergeon’s research has helped scientists piece together infants’ understanding of the physical world.
Kaufman et al.’s (2003) research supports this study. They used imaging and scanning methods to measure the brain response of infants’ brain response to a video of toy train disappearing into a tunnel.
He found that activity in the right cortex of the brain continued even after the train was hidden in both conditions. Showing that they were maintaining a mental image and still thinking about it
Limitations
The VOE research was criticised for being highly based on interpretation.
Haith’s (1998) critic was based on the idea of parsimony that scientists should always aim for the simplest explanation of a phenomenon. Infants could have had an after image of the block.
Rivera et al used the same VOE technique and found that the children stared longer at the 180 degrees rotation than the 112 one. Possibly because it lasts longer.
