Papers by Renée Baillargeon
Child Development, 2009
Recent research has shown that infants as young as 13 months can attribute false beliefs to agent... more Recent research has shown that infants as young as 13 months can attribute false beliefs to agents, suggesting that the psychological-reasoning subsystem necessary for attributing reality-incongruent informational states (Subsystem-2, SS2) is operational in infancy. The present research asked whether 18-month-olds' false-belief reasoning extends to false beliefs about object identity. Infants watched events involving an agent and 2 toy penguins; 1 penguin could be disassembled (2-piece penguin) and 1 could not (1-piece penguin). Infants realized that outdated contextual information could lead the agent to falsely believe she was facing the 1-piece rather than the 2-piece penguin, suggesting that 18-month-olds can attribute false beliefs about the identity of objects and providing new evidence for SS2 reasoning in the 2nd year of life.
Psychological Science, 2013
Recent experiments have suggested that infants' expectations about the actions of agents are guid... more Recent experiments have suggested that infants' expectations about the actions of agents are guided by a principle of rationality: In particular, infants expect agents to pursue their goals efficiently, expending as little effort as possible. However, these experiments have all presented infants with infrequent or odd actions, which leaves the results open to alternative interpretations and makes it difficult to determine whether infants possess a general expectation of efficiency. We devised a critical test of the rationality principle that did not involve infrequent or odd actions. In two experiments, 16-montholds watched events in which an agent faced two identical goal objects; although both objects could be reached by typical, everyday actions, one object was physically (Experiment 1) or mentally (Experiment 2) more accessible than the other. In both experiments, infants expected the agent to select the more-accessible object. These results provide new evidence that infants possess a general and robust expectation of efficiency.
Developmental Science, 2014
Research over the past 20 years has revealed that even very young infants possess expectations ab... more Research over the past 20 years has revealed that even very young infants possess expectations about physical events, and that these expectations undergo significant developments during the first year of life. In this article, I first review some of this research, focusing on infants' expectations about occlusion, containment, and covering events, all of which involve hidden objects. Next, I present
In this article, I address three broad challenges that have been directed at claims that even you... more In this article, I address three broad challenges that have been directed at claims that even young infants are able to represent and to reason about hidden objects. The first challenge is that such claims are static and non-developmental and as such represent an unproductive approach to the study of infant cognition. The second challenge is that claims that even
Developmental Psychology, 1988
Recent studies have shown that when an object is hidden in a location A and then in a location B,... more Recent studies have shown that when an object is hidden in a location A and then in a location B, 8-month-old infants tend to search in A if forced to wait 3 s before retrieving the object, and to search randomly in A or B if forced to wait 6 s before retrieving the object (e.g., Diamond, 1985). A non-search
Infant Behavior & Development, 1996
The present research examined 2.5-month-old infants' reasoning about occlusion events. Three expe... more The present research examined 2.5-month-old infants' reasoning about occlusion events. Three experiments investigated infants' ability to predict whether an object should remain continuously hidden or become temporarily visible when passing behind an occluder with an opening in its midsection. In Experiment 1, the infants were habituated to a short toy mouse that moved back and forth behind a screen. Next, the infants saw two test events that were identical to the habituation event except that a portion of the screen's midsection was removed to create a large window. In one event (high-window event), the window extended from the screen's upper edge; the mouse was shorter than the bottom of the window and thus did not become visible when passing behind the screen. In the other event (low-window event), the window extended from the screen's lower edge; although the mouse was shorter than the top of the window and hence should have become fully visible when passing behind the screen, it never appeared in the window. The infants tended to look equally at the high-and low-window events, suggesting that they were not surprised when the mouse failed to appear in the low window. However, positive results were obtained in Experiment 2 when the low-window event was modified: a portion of the screen above the window was removed so that the left and right sections of the screen were no longer connected (two-screens event). The infants looked reliably longer at the two-screens than at the high-window event. Together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that, at 2.5 months of age, infants possess only very limited expectations about when objects should and should not be occluded. Specifically, infants expect objects (1) to become visible when passing between occluders and (2) to remain hidden when passing behind occluders, irre-
Developmental Science, 1998
Abstract 1. Presents data from a series of experiments which investigated young infants&a... more Abstract 1. Presents data from a series of experiments which investigated young infants' use of configural, experiential, and physical knowledge in organizing partly occluded and adjacent displays. The authors' hypothesis in these experiments is that young infants, like adults, use all 3 types of object knowledge when segregating displays. The findings indicate that, from a very young age, infants' perception of objects and their boundaries is a complex process that depends on the integration of multiple types of information. This ...
... Titre du document / Document title. A model of physical reasoning in infancy Auteur(s) / Auth... more ... Titre du document / Document title. A model of physical reasoning in infancy Auteur(s) / Author(s). BAILLARGEON R. ; ... Illinois, dep. psychology, Champaign IL 61820, ETATS-UNIS Revue / Journal Title. Advances in infancy research ISSN 0732-9598 Source / Source. 1995, vol. ...
... This finding provided evidence that the infants in the experimental condition looked longer a... more ... This finding provided evidence that the infants in the experimental condition looked longer at the impossible event, not because they preferred the 180 screen rotation, but because they expect-ed the screen to stop and were surprised that it did not. ...
Developmental Science, 1999
In this article, I address three broad challenges that have been directed at claims that even you... more In this article, I address three broad challenges that have been directed at claims that even young infants are able to represent and to reason about hidden objects. The first challenge is that such claims are static and non-developmental and as such represent an unproductive approach to the study of infant cognition. The second challenge is that claims that even young infants represent hidden objects typically go hand in hand with assertions that infants are born with a belief that objects exist continuously in time and move continuously through space, and there is no evidence to date to support such assertions. Finally, the third challenge is that reports that young infants represent hidden objects can all be explained more parsimoniously in terms of low level perceptual biases in infants' encoding and processing of events, or in terms of transient expectations formed during habituation trials and later extended to test trials.
Developmental Science, 1998
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Papers by Renée Baillargeon