Lecture 9 Flashcards
o Methods for studying infant cognition
- Preferential technique
- Giving infant two s__ and examining whether the baby exhibits a p__ for one of the objects
- Habituation
- Habituation occurs to c__ stimuli, direct attention to n__ stimuli
- Violation-of-expectation
- Babies spend __ time looking at things that b__ the laws of physics (“i__” incident)
stimuli, preference
common, novel
more, break, “impossible”
Object segregation: the perception of the b__ between objects
boundaries
Common motion: a c__ to boundaries between objects-used by _ months.
rod and block study:
- habituated to rod with block then presented with one long rod and one split rod to recover attention.
- recovered attention to __ one
- they understand block and rod initially shown are two __ objects.
cue, 2
split
separate
o Development of infants’ physical knowledge
- Support relations
- Infants know that objects cannot __ in the air but only gradually do they come to understand what conditions one object can be s__ by another
float
supported
o Understanding intentions and goals
•Object preference study (human hand vs. mechanical claw)
- hand reached for same object until baby habituated and then reached for new object which __ the babies attention.
- infant was paying attention to __ of what hand was reaching for, not the __ of the item.
-when a mechanic claw was used babies didn’t pay attention to the __
recovered
goal, location
goal
o Understanding intentions and goals
Meltzoff dumbbell study
•babies observed adults attempt and failures to take apart a barbell
-they also observed the same actions by a mechanical device
-babies imitated __’s action but not __ device.
person’s, mechanical
C__ r__ key to objects interpreted as having intentions.
ex: when the blob and person interact like p__.
contingent responsiveness
people
o Social preferences
- Helper/hinderer study
- Children as young as _ months preferred the ‘__’ block once they saw the other block that was pushing the main block down the hill (the h__).
6
helper
hinderer
- Understanding others’ minds
- Onishi and Baillargeon crafty watermelon study with __-month-olds
On the table between the baby and the actor was a toy watermelon slice and two boxes whose openings faced each other; one box was green, the other yellow.
To start, the actor picked up the watermelon slice, played with it, and then hid it in the green box. On subsequent trials, the actor always reached into the green box, as though to grasp the watermelon slice she had hidden there.
Then, seemingly unbeknownst to the actor but in sight of the infant, the watermelon slice moved to the yellow box.
This change created a false belief for the actor as to the location of the coveted watermelon slice, said principal investigator Renée Baillargeon (pronounced BY-uhr-zhan), a professor of psychology at Illinois.
The infants expected the actor to search for the watermelon toy in the green box (where she falsely believed it to be), and not in the yellow box (where it actually was and where the infants knew it to be). The infants looked reliably longer when the actor searched the yellow box, as though surprised by this unexpected event.
If the actor was present when the watermelon slice moved from the green to the yellow box, the infants now expected the actor to search the yellow box, and they were surprised if she went to the green box instead. The infants attributed to the actor a true belief that the toy was hidden in the yellow box, and they expected her to act accordingly.
15
