The principal investigator proposes a model of infants' learning about the physical world in which infants are born with a specialized learning mechanism that guides their acquisition of physical knowledge. This mechanism is thought to be responsible for two processes: (1) the formation of event categories that correspond to distinct ways in which objects behave, and (2) the identification of an initial concept and later on the elaboration of variables that affect each event category. When learning about an event category, infants first form a preliminary, all-or-none concept that captures only the essence of the category. With further experience, this initial concept is progressively elaborated. Infants slowly identify variables that are relevant to the category and incorporate this additional knowledge into their reasoning, resulting in increasingly accurate predictions over time. In past research the principal investigator has pursued the nature of the learning mechanism that directs infants' formation of event categories and identification of variables. She has examined different event categories to trace and compare their respective developmental courses. She has also attempted to """"""""teach"""""""" infants variables they have not yet identified by presenting them with pertinent observations. She plans to continue these lines of research, as well as undertaking a new line of research to examine whether infants can demonstrate in object-manipulation tasks the same physical knowledge that has been uncovered in visual-attention tasks.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD021104-14
Application #
2857419
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG2-BEM (03))
Program Officer
Feerick, Margaret M
Project Start
1985-12-01
Project End
2002-12-31
Budget Start
1999-01-01
Budget End
1999-12-31
Support Year
14
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041544081
City
Champaign
State
IL
Country
United States
Zip Code
61820
Baillargeon, Renée; DeJong, Gerald F (2017) Explanation-based learning in infancy. Psychon Bull Rev 24:1511-1526
Setoh, Peipei; Scott, Rose M; Baillargeon, Renée (2016) Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113:13360-13365
Scott, Rose M; Richman, Joshua C; Baillargeon, Renée (2015) Infants understand deceptive intentions to implant false beliefs about identity: New evidence for early mentalistic reasoning. Cogn Psychol 82:32-56
Song, Hyun-Joo; Baillargeon, Renée; Fisher, Cynthia (2014) The development of infants' use of novel verbal information when reasoning about others' actions. PLoS One 9:e92387
Setoh, Peipei; Wu, Di; Baillargeon, Renee et al. (2013) Young infants have biological expectations about animals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110:15937-42
Yang, Daniel Y-J; Baillargeon, Renee (2013) Brief report: difficulty in understanding social acting (but not false beliefs) mediates the link between autistic traits and ingroup relationships. J Autism Dev Disord 43:2199-206
Scott, Rose M; Baillargeon, Renée (2013) Do infants really expect agents to act efficiently? A critical test of the rationality principle. Psychol Sci 24:466-74
Sloane, Stephanie; Baillargeon, Renee; Premack, David (2012) Do infants have a sense of fairness? Psychol Sci 23:196-204
Baillargeon, Renée; Stavans, Maayan; Wu, Di et al. (2012) Object Individuation and Physical Reasoning in Infancy: An Integrative Account. Lang Learn Dev 8:4-46
Scott, Rose M; He, Zijing; Baillargeon, Renee et al. (2012) False-belief understanding in 2.5-year-olds: evidence from two novel verbal spontaneous-response tasks. Dev Sci 15:181-93

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