Baillargeon's early infants abilities

Violation of expectation

• Babies will have expectations about a situation

• If these expectations are not met, then they will react accordingly

  • They will stare at the event for longer - showing that they’re surprised

• If a child understands how the physical world operates, then impossible events should cause VoE

What was the main aim of Baillargeon’s study into infants abilities

• To test if VoE occurs in earlier months than what Piaget suggested (develop object permanence 8-9 months)

• Wanted to find out the age at which babies developed knowledge of an objects physical properties

What method did Baillargeon use?

• Baillargeon and Grabber showed 24 babies (aged between 5-6 months) possible and impossible events.

• They showed a tall and short rabbit passing behind a screen with a window

• What’s expected is that when the tall rabbit passes through the screen, the ears should be seen in the window. If they aren’t seen, then it’s an impossible event

• The time that each infant looked at the event was recorded

What were the results of Baillargeons study?

• The babies looked on average:

  • Impossible event - 33:07 seconds

  • Expected event - 25:11 seconds

• The longer time for the impossible events indicates that the babies were surprised. This suggests that they knew or had expected to see the tall rabbits ears to seen through the window.

How do the results contradict Piaget’s?

• The results in Baillargeon’s study suggest that babies have an understanding of object permanence from birth. They have a better understanding by 5-6 months

• This differs from Piaget who suggest that object permanence develops at around 8-9 months

What innate system explains the understanding of the universe in real life?

Physical reasoning system (PRS)

What was the word used to describe when one object blocked the view of another?

Occlusion

State 2 similarities between Baillargeon’s and Piaget’s studies

• They both looked at object permanence

• They both had empirical research

  • Piaget - ball and blanket

  • Baillargeon - tall and small rabbit passing through screen

State 2 differences between Baillargeon’s and Piaget’s studies

• Piaget suggested that babies develop object permanence around 8-9 months, while Baillargeon argued that babies have an innate understanding of OP

• Piaget chose his sample from middle-class and educated families (not generalisable), whereas Baillargeon used birth announcements

AO3 Strength

• Once strength of Baillargeon’s research is that it has scientific credibility, because she removed confounding variables

• Piaget said that a baby looking away from the event, meant that they thought the object no longer existed. However, the baby may have just looked away because of a distraction (confounding variable)

• Baillargeon removed the confounding variable of distraction by measuring how long the infant looked at the event, not whether they looked away or not

• Therefore, Baillargeon’s research has greater internal validity than Piaget, because by removing confounding variables, this accurately ensures that she is measuring what she set out to measure

AO3 Strength

• A strength of Baillargeon’s theory is it can be applied universally

• Susan Hespos and Kristy Van Marle, suggested that everyone has a basic understanding on the characteristics of the world, regardless of culture or individual differences. For example, if keys drop, we know it will fall on the ground - this doesn’t require past experience or culture to understand

• The evidence suggests that the universal understanding of the physical world is innate. This is in line with Baillargeon’s theory of a ‘physical reasoning system’ at birth

• Therefore, Baillargeon’s theory can be accurately applied beyond the setting of her experiment

AO3 Strength

• One strength of Baillargeon’s research is that she controls extraneous variable which could have affected her results

• Piaget’s theory was criticised for only using middle-class children, which wasn’t representative and generalisable. However, Baillargeon controlled this by selecting her sample from birth announcements

• Another factor that may have impacted the results was that the children sat on their parents lap, so the parents could unconsciously communicate cues to their child on how to react. Baillargeon prevented this by asking the parent to shut their eyes and to not interact with the child

• Therefore, Baillargeon’s research has greater validity due to her research being more objective than Piaget’s

AO3 Weakness

• One weakness of Baillargeon’s theory was that there were methodological limitations with her research

• She inferred that when the infant looked at the event for longer, it was due to violation of expectation. However, this may have been due to the infant finding the event interesting for some other reason.

• Piaget said that babies respond to unexpected events, but this doesn’t mean that they actually understand them

• Therefore Baillargeon’s method for measuring violation of expectation may not be valid