How Infants Learn Dr Renee Baillargeon

Description: "As adults," says Dr. Renee Baillargeon, "we possess a great deal of knowledge about the physical world, which we use for many different purposes: for example, to predict and interpret the outcomes of physical events, to guide our actions on objects, to interpret others' actions, and even to entertain or deceive others. Over the past 20 years, my collaborators and I have been studying how infants use their developing physical knowledge to predict and interpret the outcomes of the physical events they observe. Our research has brought to light two general findings: first, even very young infants possess expectations about occlusion, containment, collision, support, and other physical events; second, these expectations undergo significant and predictable developments during the first year of life. Over the past few years, we have been developing an account of infants' physical reasoning that attempts to capture and explain these findings. In my talk, I will first summarize major findings concerning infants' physical reasoning. Next, I will describe and illustrate our account. New lines of research are presented that test specific predictions from the account."