What´s Violation Of Expectation Studies Considered Controversial?
Why are violation of expectation studies considered controversial?
Most psychological research needs participants and researchers to communicate clearly with one another. When it comes to very young children that are quite hard. Researchers have no way to communicate with infants therefore they need another way to measure the infants’ reaction. Violation of expectation studies appear to propose a solution to these problems. The violation of expectation studies are studies generally used in developmental psychology when researchers work with infants. These studies are a method that assess very young children’s knowledge about the world (rules of solidity and continuity). It assumes that infants visual attention is drawn to surprise …show more content…
Previous infant studies that used the violation of expectation paradigm give the impression that infants have knowledge of physical laws. They discriminate between visually possible events and visually impossible events. However, toddlers studies that exam the same physical rules find that these young children lack the knowledge. (Keen, 2003) For example, Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson (1992) conducted a violation of expectations study with 3-month-olds and found that infants' looking time for impossible events is longer than for possible events. Spelke et al (1992) looked at how infants react when presented with two events one inconsistent (impossible) and consistent (possible). In both events, there was a ball that rolled from left to right, an obstacle in the way of the ball near a wall and a screen that later covers the balls path. In the consistent trial after the ball was rolled and the screen was lifted the ball was next to the obstacle. In the inconsistent trial after the ball was rolled and the screen was lifted the ball looked as if it had moved beyond the obstacle and was resting next to a wall. The inconsistent trial seemed have defied the rules of solidity and continuity. This study had both habituation trials and control group that did the same experiment minus the
Most psychological research needs participants and researchers to communicate clearly with one another. When it comes to very young children that are quite hard. Researchers have no way to communicate with infants therefore they need another way to measure the infants’ reaction. Violation of expectation studies appear to propose a solution to these problems. The violation of expectation studies are studies generally used in developmental psychology when researchers work with infants. These studies are a method that assess very young children’s knowledge about the world (rules of solidity and continuity). It assumes that infants visual attention is drawn to surprise …show more content…
Previous infant studies that used the violation of expectation paradigm give the impression that infants have knowledge of physical laws. They discriminate between visually possible events and visually impossible events. However, toddlers studies that exam the same physical rules find that these young children lack the knowledge. (Keen, 2003) For example, Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson (1992) conducted a violation of expectations study with 3-month-olds and found that infants' looking time for impossible events is longer than for possible events. Spelke et al (1992) looked at how infants react when presented with two events one inconsistent (impossible) and consistent (possible). In both events, there was a ball that rolled from left to right, an obstacle in the way of the ball near a wall and a screen that later covers the balls path. In the consistent trial after the ball was rolled and the screen was lifted the ball was next to the obstacle. In the inconsistent trial after the ball was rolled and the screen was lifted the ball looked as if it had moved beyond the obstacle and was resting next to a wall. The inconsistent trial seemed have defied the rules of solidity and continuity. This study had both habituation trials and control group that did the same experiment minus the