What is Ballargoen’s explanation of early infant abillities research aiming to discover?
Unsuspected abilities of newborns and young children
Why is Balligeron’s research hard to carry out?
Infants can’t easily indicate what they are thinking due to their inability to form language and perform movement
(lack of ability due to motor differences than a lack of mental ability)
The contrast between Piaget and Balligeron
- Piaget suggested object permance did not develop around 9 months
- Balliageron suggested that the reason why infants did not search for objects they were out of sight - didn’t have the physical capability do so than failure to understand object permance
What technique did Balligeron devise?
Violation of expectation (VoE research)
What is VoE technique?
A method of conducting research with infants using their surprise as a measure of whether what they see is not what they expect to see
thus we know what their expectations are
e.g tall carrot/short carrot study
‘What is expected is not what happens’
What is object permance?
Knowledge that objects exist while hidden
What did Balligeron’s research help to investigate?
A major aspect of the core knowledge theory
Core knowledge theory believes that humans have innate understanding of physical object and the relationship between them
Infants born with PRS
What is the two possibilities with core knowledge theory?
- Innate fast learning - developed mechanisms
- Innate object knowledge - innante physicla properties of objects
What did core knowledge include basic understanding of physical world
properties of objects e,g
- size
What is first stage of VoE research?
Infants are shown a particular event (e.g train in circular track going into tunnel and emerging)
First stage allows infants to become familiar with stimulus and stop responding
What is second stage of VoE research?
- Infants are divided into two groups
- Half of sample shown an unexpected event that is compatiable with what they seen before (e.g train going in tunnel and emerges) until shown unxpected (train fail to emerge from tunnel)
What is the aim of the rolling carrot study?
To investigate infant’s ability to understand object permance
Who was the rolling carrot study conducted by?
Balligeron and DeVos (1991)
What is the procedure with rolling carrot study?
There was a large /small carrot sliding across a track and hidden at one part of the screen with a large window
The track was arranged so large carrots should be visible as a pass behind the window (in fact it does not)
Whereas small carrot (not as tall) should remain hidden.
The impossible event is the large carrot not appearing if an infant does have object permance, they show surprise (increased looking) shown this
What is findings of rolling carrot task?
- Balligeron and DeVos found that children at young as three months demonstrated object permance when tested (Piaget found this abvility at eight months)
- Infants looked longer at the large carrot , presumably expecting the top half to be visible behind the video
- i.e. object permance to understand principle of occulsion (understanding what happens object is obstructured by another)
What is the aim of the drawbridge experiment?
To investigate infant’s ability to understand object permance
Who did the drawbridge experiment?
Balliageron et al 1985
What is the procedure of the drawbridge experiment?
- First stage of experiment , infants (5 and a half months) were seated in front of a stage and shown drawbridge in flat position - 180 degrees
- This would repeat until infants habituated to event
- Second stage of experiment , a colourful box is placed on drawbridge
- Raise to 112 degres and stop
What is findings of drawbridge experiment?
- Time was significantly longer at unexpected experimental stage
- Concluded infant’s attentionwas grabbed by the impossible event by drawbridge moving through block
- Conclusion - infants remeber hidden block’s existence - object permance
What sampling method did Balligeron used?
Typically recuited participants by getting names from a list of recent births in a newspaper
Opprtunity sampling
it is less time and easiest
What ethical issues related to VoE research?
- Deception - could give a full debreig
- VoE (risk) - Protection from harm
- Privacy - names given as numbers/Anon
- Consent given by explanation to parents
Current reasearch
e.g Contrast with Piaget and Balligeron
- With Elizabeth offers contrasting explanation that believes infants are born with substantial knowledge regarding objects (innate principle)
- They argue that infants are born with knowledge which includes basic understanding of physical world
- Ballaigeron argues innate principles approach would produce
First issue and debate
- culture bias
- Balliageron accused of culture bias in his theory
- This is because he utilised opportunity sampling in his procedure in which picked out recent births in newspaper
- This lacks validity in his method taking Western perspective only
- This shows his theory can’t be generalised to non-Western cultures
Second issue and debate AO3
- Nature and nurture
- Balligeron takes side of both nature and nrture of the debate of his theory to be stronger
- This is shown as the innate mechanisms of object permance develop between 3-4 months
- As well as utilising innate fast-learning from the envirnoment
- This shows Balliagoern takes interactionist appraoch so can be generalised to envirnoment
