Crically Evaluate the Claim That Infants Have an Innate...

Critically evaluate the claim that infants have an innate knowledge of object properties. Use evidence to support your arguments. Object properties have been systematically associated with the Piagetian approach of cognitive development and in particular the sensorimotor period. Until the 1970’s, Piaget’s influential stance that knowledge of object properties is only learned from around nine months old had not been questioned. However, due to more contemporary studies there have been claims that not only do younger infants exhibit behaviours suggesting that Piaget’s assumptions may underestimate cognitive abilities but some studies have controversially suggested that newborns have shown to have a certain amount of innate knowledge. This†¦show more content†¦Interestingly though, some researchers do not halt at the suggestion that Piaget underestimated younger infants cognitive abilities, but instead refute Piaget’s assumption that ‘humans do not start out as cognitive beings’ (Berk, 2009) and in fact have some innate cognitive abilities. There have been suggesti ons that knowledge of object properties depends on visual information relating to perceptual abilities of the infant, addressed in a study by Valenza, Zulian and Leo (2005). They tested infants’ ability to recognise a correspondence between one version of a simple shape with another. Results showed infants recognised a correspondence more between a partly occluded shape and a non occluded shape than a non occluded shape and an unoccluded shape with a gap, implying that there may be some innate ability. The importance of the simplicity of the shapes used in Valenza et al’s study (2005) had been addressed by other researchers such as Kellman and Spelke (1983) who stated that the type of visual information used by younger infants differs from the visual information used by older children, therefore implying that there may be different thresholds of information needed for