week 8 - understanding the physical world Flashcards
What are the foundational domains for cognitive development?
- knowledge of the physical world
- knowledge of the social world
- knowledge of the kinds of things in the world
What is naiive physics, in the context of infant cognition?
The intuitive understanding about objects in the physical world that infants possess, such as:
- knowing that dropped objects will fall
- knowing that solid objects cannot pass through eachother
what is object concept and when does Piaget believe infants develop it?
- piaget proposed that object concept is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight
- he suggests infants lack this understanding until 18 months
- this is because they only represent whatever is immediately accessible to their sensorimotor system
What do Spelke and Baillargeon believe that infants know about objects?
infants have abstract representations of objects and some of their properties
How can we study what infants know about the physical world?
violation of expectation paradigm
- infants are shown a physical event
- on test trials, they are then shown events that are:
- compatible with the event (possible)
- incompatible with the event (impossible) - thus, violating their expectation
- infants look longer at the impossible event than the possible event
- taken as evidence of understanding of the physical principle involved
Describe the method and results of the Baillaregon & Graber (1987) study on infants’ understanding of spatial relations
- 5.5 month olds were habituated to a short or tall rabbit passing behind a wall
- during test trials, the mid-section of the wall was missing
- infants were dishabituated in the tall rabbit group due to violation of expectations:
- infants looked longer at the event where a tall rabbit failed to appear above the missing section, suggesting they could represent relative height and understood that the tall rabbit should be partially visible
Explain the method and findings of the Bailargeon et al. (1985) study on object permanence
- 5 month olds were habituated to a screen rotating like a drawbridge
- during the test trials, a box was placed in the drawbridge’s path
- infants looked longer when the drawbridge appeared to pass through the solid object (impossible event), demonstrating they understood that the box should obstruct the drawbridges movement
- this suggests object permanence
What is the truck and ramp paradigm, and what does it test? (Baillargeon, 1986)
- tests infants ability to understand object permanence
- a cart rolls down a ramp, disappears behind a screen, and reappears
- when a block is placed on the tracks behind the screen, infants look longer if the cart reappears as though it had passed through the blocks, showing that they understand the cart should be blocked
According to Spelke et al. (1992), what are the core constraints on object knowledge that infants possess?
- proposed that infants possess two core constrains on object knowledge
- continuity: objects exist continuously in time and space and move on connected paths
- solidity: objects only move on unobstructed paths and cannot occupy the same space at the same time
Describe the method and results of the Spelke et al. (1992) study investigating continuity and solidity
- 2 month olds were habituated to a ball rolling on a flat surface and stopping at a barrier
- during the test trials, infants looked longer when the ball appeared to pass through the barrier (impossible event)
- suggests they understand that the barrier should stop the ball’s movement and that objects should not move through one another
What is the key difference between the tasks used to assess infants’ and toddlers’ understanding of object permanence, and why do toddlers seem to struggle?
- infants understanding is often assessed with looking tasks based on visual expectations, while toddlers are given behavioural tasks requiring them to search for hidden objects
- toddlers struggle because they need to coordinate their knowledge with action, which involves prediction and planning, rather than just reacting
What is Berthier et al’s. (2000) study investigating object permanence in toddlers using behavioural methods?
- ball rolls down a slope and is stopped by a barrier
- the slope is covered by a wall with 4 doors in it
- the barrier sticks up above this wall
- children are tasked with finding the ball
- 2 year olds cannot do this
- rather than a looking task, it is a behavioural task
- tiddlers must then search for the ball behind closed doors, using the visual of the barrier as a guide
Describe Wynn’s (1992) study on infants’ understanding of number
- study uses violation of expectation paradigm
- infants see researcher place an object in a case. a screen comes up, and the researcher adds another object to the case (infant can see researchers hand add new object)
- 2 outcomes:
- screen is dropped revealing 2 objects, OR
- screen is dropped revealing one object
- 5 month olds looked longer when an impossible math event was shown
- suggests an understanding of number
According to Hume, what is the nature of causal knowledge?
- Hume described causal knowledge as “the cement of the universe” and suggested that it is not directly observed but rather inferred from the frequent co-occurrence of previously experienced events
How do adults perceive collision/launching events, according to Michotte (1963)?
- adults perceive collision/launching events, such as one billiard ball hitting another and causing it to move, in terms of causal relations, even when the objects are just patches of light on a wall.
- they assume a cause-effect relationship even in the absence of mechanical connection
Describe the method and results of the Leslie and Keeble (1987) study on infants’ perception of causality
- 6 month olds were habituated to either direct or delayed launching events
- shown launching in one order (e.g. red launches green), then the same sequence in reverse
- they only showed dishabituation to a reversed sequence in the direct launching condition
- this indicates that they could form causal representations of motion evens and were sensitive to the direction of causal events
According to Hume, what are the 3 causal principles?
- temporal priority: A precedes B in time
- contiguity: A and B are contiguous in time and space; must me linked by an intervening chain of contiguous events
- covariation: A and B covary in a consistent manner
How did Bullock & Gelman (1979) study young childrens ability to understand temporal priority in causal reasoning?
- children were shown a platform, separated in 3. section A was on the left and section B on the right. a jack in the box was in the middle
- tested 3, 4, and 5 year olds
- ball goes into section A, then the jack-in-the-box pops up, then the ball in B.
- all children said that A caused the jack to pup up
- children understood that the action that came first was the cause
How did Bullock & Gelman (1979) study young childrens ability to understand spatial contiguity?
- same system as their first study, but there was a gap between section A and the jack
- A rolls first, then the jack pops up, then B rolls
- children still chose A
- Temporal Priority > Spatial Contiguity
- children understand causes must come before effects
What did Tecwyn et al. (2013) find about toddlers’ understanding of temporal priority?
found that even 1 and 2 year olds act in accordance with the temporal priority principle, suggesting that this understanding of causality develops by 12 months
Explain the “blicket detector” method used to study causal learning (Gopnik et al., 2001)
- method for seeing how children learn about novel causal relationahips
- some objects make the machine light up and play music when placed on it
- objects that make the machine go are called “blickets”
- object A activates the detector by itself
- object B doesn’t activate the detector by itself
- both objects activate the detector
- children are asked if each one is a blicket
- from 3 years, children correctly infer that object A is a blicket
- however, 3 year olds show a ‘yes bias’ - tend to also say object B was a blicket
- change question to forced choice - ‘which one of these is a blicket?’ - even 2 year olds succeed
How do children use statistical evidence in causal learning? (Kushnir & Gopnik, 2005)
children can use statistical evidence to make inferences about causal strength, for example, selecting the object that activates a machine more frequently when given a choice
How does social causal learning affect toddlers’ understanding of causality? (Waismayer et al., 2014)
- even toddlers can learn causal relationships from observing statistical evidence
- children can learn causal relationships just by watching someone else interact with blickets
- 2-year-olds chose to act on the object that was more likely to produce the effect, even without any verbal instructions
- learned causal structure from observing other people’s actions and use this to generate their own actions to bring about the same effect on the world
How do children explore the world to learn about causal relationships? (Schulz & Bonawitz, 2007)
Children actively and spontaneously intervene on the world to gather data to solve causal relationships. They will sometimes override preference for novel objects in favor of exploring the causal structure of more familiar objects
- children introduced to a jack in the box toy and demonstrated to them by the investigator. they were either shown:
- confounded evidence: levers pulled at the same time, both toys pop up, cannot tell which lever causes which toy to pop up
- unconfounded evidence: levers pulled individually, different toys pop up each time, can tell which lever causes which toy to pop up
- after seeing evidence, children given the same toy and a novel toy with 1 lever, and allowed to play freely for 1 minute
- children override novelty preference to discover causal structure of familiar toy
