TY - JOUR
T1 - When the ordinary seems unexpected
T2 - Evidence for incremental physical knowledge in young infants
AU - Luo, Yuyan
AU - Baillargeon, Renée
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-21104) to the second author. We thank Cindy Fisher, Gary Marcus, and Kris Onishi for helpful suggestions; and Deepa Block, Laura Brueckner, Laura Glaser, Venessa Nolen, Shana Sappington, Laurie Tondini, Su-hua Wang, and the undergraduate assistants at the University of Illinois Infant Cognition Laboratory for their help with the data collection. We also thank the parents who kindly agreed to have their infants participate in the experiments.
PY - 2005/4
Y1 - 2005/4
N2 - According to a recent account of infants' acquisition of their physical knowledge, the incremental-knowledge account, infants form distinct event categories, such as occlusion, containment, support, and collision events. In each category, infants identify one or more vectors which correspond to distinct problems that must be solved. For each vector, infants acquire a sequence of variables that enables them to predict outcomes within the vector more and more accurately over time. This account predicts that infants who have acquired only a few of the variables in a sequence should err in two ways in violation-of-expectation tasks: (1) they should view impossible events consistent with their incomplete knowledge as expected (errors of omission), and (2) they should view possible events inconsistent with their incomplete knowledge as unexpected (errors of commission). Many reports have shown that infants who have not yet identified a variable in an event category produce errors of omission: they fail to view impossible events involving the variable as unexpected. However, there has been no report revealing errors of commission in infants' responses to possible events. The present research examined whether 3- and 2.5-month-old infants, whose knowledge of occlusion events is very limited, would produce errors of commission as well as errors of omission when responding to these events. At 3 months of age, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its upper edge. At 2.5 months, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its lower edge. These findings provide a new kind of evidence for the incremental-knowledge account, and more generally for the notion that infants, like older children and adults, engage in rule-based reasoning about physical events.
AB - According to a recent account of infants' acquisition of their physical knowledge, the incremental-knowledge account, infants form distinct event categories, such as occlusion, containment, support, and collision events. In each category, infants identify one or more vectors which correspond to distinct problems that must be solved. For each vector, infants acquire a sequence of variables that enables them to predict outcomes within the vector more and more accurately over time. This account predicts that infants who have acquired only a few of the variables in a sequence should err in two ways in violation-of-expectation tasks: (1) they should view impossible events consistent with their incomplete knowledge as expected (errors of omission), and (2) they should view possible events inconsistent with their incomplete knowledge as unexpected (errors of commission). Many reports have shown that infants who have not yet identified a variable in an event category produce errors of omission: they fail to view impossible events involving the variable as unexpected. However, there has been no report revealing errors of commission in infants' responses to possible events. The present research examined whether 3- and 2.5-month-old infants, whose knowledge of occlusion events is very limited, would produce errors of commission as well as errors of omission when responding to these events. At 3 months of age, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its upper edge. At 2.5 months, infants viewed as unexpected a possible event in which a tall cylinder became visible when passing behind a tall screen with a very large opening extending from its lower edge. These findings provide a new kind of evidence for the incremental-knowledge account, and more generally for the notion that infants, like older children and adults, engage in rule-based reasoning about physical events.
KW - Errors of omission and commission
KW - Occlusion events
KW - Rule-based reasoning in infancy
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.010
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 15788161
AN - SCOPUS:15444372593
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 95
SP - 297
EP - 328
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 3
ER -