Baillargeon's explanation of early infant abilities

violation of expectation (VOE) research

Baillargeon (2004) used the VOE method to study infant understanding of object permanence. In VOE studies, babies are shown two events: an expected event that aligns with physical laws, and an unexpected one that violates them. Longer looking at the unexpected event suggests surprise and, therefore, understanding.

In Baillargeon and Graber’s (1987) study, 24 infants aged 5–6 months saw a tall and a short rabbit pass behind a screen with a window. In the expected event, only the short rabbit was hidden and not seen through the window. In the unexpected event, the tall rabbit also passed behind the screen but did not appear in the window, which violates expectations.

Babies looked longer at the unexpected event (33.07 secs) than the expected one (25.11 secs), suggesting surprise. This indicates that the infants understood the tall rabbit should have been visible, providing evidence for early object permanence.

What is meant by ’violation of expectation’?

what is expected is not what happens.

Baillargeon → object permanence is due to poor motor skills

1. infants in the sensory motor stage may have better developed understanding of the physical world than proposed by Piaget. Suggests they’re born with this – nativist. 

2. infants don’t reach for a hidden object cuz they lack an understanding of object permanence but rather, cuz they didn’t have the necessary motor skills. 

3. found a better way to research cognitive abilities than Piaget. developed a technique called VOE research. 

habituation

baby is shown an object or situation; habituation is said to have occurred when the infant begins to look away. 

look time

The DV in many of these studies is the amount of time the infant spends looking at the object or scene. 

AO3 - strength of VOE

Carefully controlled research: 
- Baillargeon and DeVos used birth announcements in a local paper. This reduces the sample bias slightly (compared to Piaget who used the mc infants of academics). Thus, it has high population validity. 
- Another factor to control is the potential effect of the parent on their infant's behaviour. So, parents were asked to keep their eyes shut and not interact with the infant. 
- She used a double-blind design. 2 observers recorded the infants' level of interest, but neither knew whether the event was possible or impossible. 

false beliefs

Song and Baillargeon used VOE to test false beliefs in very young infants. 

Infants as young as 14 ½ months showed more surprise if the woman opens up the plain box, than the one with hair sticking out. 

they expect the woman to have a false belief. 

Baillargeon’s theory of infant physical reasoning

humans are born with a physical reasoning system (PRS) - hardwired with both a basic understanding of the physical world and the ability to learn more details easily. Initially we have a primitive awareness of the physical properties of the world and this becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience. One aspect of the world of which we have a crude understanding from birth is object persistence - the idea that an object remains in existence and doesn’t spontaneously alter in structure.

Development proceeds as follows - in the first few weeks of life babies begin to identify event categories. Each event category corresponds to one way in which objects interact. e.g. occlusion events take place when one object blocks the view of another. cuz a baby is born with a basic understanding of object persistence and quickly learns that one object can block their view of another, by the time they’re tested in tasks like Baillargeon and Graber's VOE with tall and short rabbits, babies actually have a good understanding that the tall rabbit should appear at the window. The 'unexpected' event captures the baby's attention cuz the nature of their PRS means they’re predisposed to attend to new events that might allow them to develop their understanding of the physical world.

AO3 - evaluations of Baillargeon’s explanations of infant abilities

strength: validity of VOE

limitation: may not be object permanence

strength: universal understanding

AO3 - strength of Baillargeon’s explanations of infant abilities: validity of VOE

Baillargeon’s VOE method improves on Piaget’s research by controlling for distraction. Piaget assumed that when babies stopped searching for hidden objects, they no longer believed they existed. However, VOE avoids this issue by only measuring how long babies look at an event, removing distraction as a confounding variable. This increases the validity of Baillargeon’s conclusions about early cognitive abilities.

COUNTER: just because infants look longer at unexpected events doesn’t mean they understand them. As Bremner (2013) argues, attention to a violation doesn’t equal conscious understanding, which limits what VOE studies can tell us about true cognitive development.

AO3 - limitation of Baillargeon’s explanations of infant abilities: may not be object permanence

assumes that response to VOE is linked to unexpectedness and hence object permanence.

Piaget suggested that babies respond to unexpected events but that this doesn’t mean they truly understand it. A further methodological issue is that babies' response may not even be to the unexpectedness of the event. All VOE shows is that babies find certain events more interesting. We’re inferring a link between this response and object permanence. although the different length of time spent looking at two different events may reflect one being more interesting than the other, this may not be cuz the baby sees it as unexpected. It could be interesting for some other reason.

This means that the VOE method may not be an entirely valid way to study a very young child's understanding of the physical world.

AO3 - strength of Baillargeon’s explanations of infant abilities: universal understanding

Hespos and Marle (2012) → we all have a very good understanding of the basic characteristics of the physical world regardless of culture and personal experience. e.g. everyone understands that if we drop a key ring it will fall to the ground. This doesn’t require past experience of dropping keys or even a culture that makes use of keys. This universal understanding suggests that a basic understanding of the physical world is innate. If it weren’t innate we’d expect significant cultural and individual differences and there’s no evidence for these.

This innate basic understanding of the physical world suggests that Baillargeon's PRS is correct.