A* EXEMPLAR ESSAY- DESCRIBE AND EVALUATE BAILLARGEON'S EXPLANATION OF EARLY INFANT ABILITIES (16/16),
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Course
Cognition and development
Institution
AQA
This is a model 16/16 answer for AQA A-level psychology module-cognition and development. It includes an A01 paragraph describing Baillargeon's theory, comparing it to Piaget's theory, and three A03 paragraphs (one strength and two weaknesses), including other studies for contradiction, methodologi...
Describe and evaluate Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant
abilities (16)
A01:
Baillargeon’s explanation contradicted Piaget’s theory, which stated that a
child doesn’t have object permanence until 8 months whereas Baillargeon
states that an infant’s understanding of the physical world is innate. She
believes we have a physical reasoning system where children are born with
the capacity to acquire object knowledge easily. They are also born with core
knowledge of the properties of objects such as the solidity of objects- objects
cannot pass through each other, and the continuity of motion- objects move
in paths through space to get from A to B. This understanding is primitive and
will become more sophisticated as the child develops their motor skills.
Baillargeon also proposed the violation of expectation, where due to an
infant’s understanding of the physical world, they will expect certain things to
happen in particular situations, and if these don’t occur, the child will react
accordingly. Baillargeon tested VOE with 24 infants aged 5-6 months who
were shown a tall and short rabbit behind a screen. In the possible condition,
the tall rabbit would be seen, but in the impossible condition, neither rabbit
would be seen. As the infants looked at the impossible condition for 33
seconds compared to 25 seconds for the possible, Baillargeon interpreted this
as they were surprised that the tall rabbit didn’t reappear, violating their
expectations of the physical world and demonstrating object permanence
earlier than Piaget thought.
A03:
A strength of Baillargeon’s explanation is that it has been praised for
providing a better test understanding than Piaget’s. Whilst Piaget concluded
that the child believed the object no longer existed out of their visual field,
the controlled method of testing VOE is a better method for testing the child’s
object permanence. This is because it eliminates the confounding variable of
the child simply losing interest in the object. Therefore, Baillargeon’s theory
challenges the work of Piaget, showing that object permanence is present
from a much earlier age than Piaget believed, supported in her studies.
However, a methodological criticism arises in the age of infants involved in
her studies. Baillargeon used infants a few months old and not new-borns and
therefore, she cannot say that an infant’s understanding of the physical world
is innate as this would ignore any learning or experience that has taken place
in the first few months of their life. Consequently, we cannot be certain that
the infant’s physical reasoning system demonstrated in the experiment was
not acquired during this time. Therefore, this methodological issue hinders
the validity of the study.
Another weakness of Baillargeon’s explanation is that her studies are low in
face and internal validity as they may have not measured what they were
supposed to measure (Surprise from violation of expectation). Other
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