Baillargeon's ideas and explaination.?

Question

What possible explanations does Baillargeon offer for

object permanence knowledge in young infants?

Answer 1

In famous experiments, R Baillargeon (1987) used the 'preferential looking paradigm' as part of her study. She argues that infants can recall representation of objects including object properties and can reason about those objects.

Baillargeon made an experimental display which used a drawbridge which rotated and a solid object which could be put in the way or taken away. There were two conditions; one of which was ‘physically possible’ with the drawbridge rotating until it was stopped by the object and the other which was impossible when the drawbridge appeared to rotate through the object. These were shown to 3 and a half to 4 ½ month old babies.

The results found that the subjects looked longer at the impossible condition than the possible condition. Baillargeon argued that this preferential looking at the impossible condition by participants is due to the violation of the “beliefs” that infants have about solid objects. She argues that infants understand the properties of objects and the operations that can be performed on them and that babies in this experiment looked for longer at the impossible condition because it violated their understandings about objects.

Source(s) Baillargeon, R. (1987). Object Permanence In 3 ½ And 4 ½ Month Old Infants. Developmental psychology, 23 issue 5, pages 655 to 664.