Baillergeon's explanation of early infant's abilities

Baillargeon's VOE study

Baillargeon contested Piaget's sensorimotor stage and claims children very young understand object permanence. Piaget - babies less than 8 months have very primitive understanding of the world.             - Claims infants this young believe objects do not continue to exist after they leave their visual field Critics argue that infants may be unable to search for hidden objects as they do not yet possess the motor skills, or have limited attention capacity. Baillargeon - demonstrated infants may have better developed knowledge of the physical world than previously thought through Violation of Expectation (VOE).

Procedure of VOE Baillargeon & Graber - carried out an occlusion study. Showed 24 infants aged 5-6 months a tall and short rabbit ass behind a screen with a window. Possible condition - tall rabbit can be seen passing the window but the short one cannot. Impossible condition - neither rabbit appeared at the window.

Findings of VOE Impossible event - infants looked for an average of 33.07 seconds. Possible event - infants looked for an average of 25.11 seconds. Researchers interpreted this as the infants being surprised at the impossible condition. For them to have been surprised means they must have known the tall rabbit should appear in the window, demonstrating object permanence.

Theory of infant physical reasoning

Proposes humans are born with a physical reasoning system (born with 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. This becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience. Have a crude understanding of object persistence from birth. Similar to Piaget's object permanence; the object remains in existence and does not spontaneously alter in structure.

First few weeks of life - infants begin to identify event categories. Each category corresponds to one way objects interact. E.g. occlusion events take place when one object blocks the view of another. Child born with a basic understanding of object persistence so quickly learn that one object can block the view of another. This means by the time they are tested in tasks like Baillargeon's VOE, they have a good understanding that the tall rabbit should appear in the window. Impossible event captures attention because the nature of their physical reasoning means they are predisposed to attend to new events that allow them to develop their sense of the physical world.