An experiment to find out object permanence in babies.

The hypothesis is that children above the age of 8months will demonstrate object permanence when shown an object (no matter what shape or color) and that they will look for it even though it is not there (driven by curiosity.)

Null Hypothesis:

The null hypothesis is whether or not the child demonstrates object permanence will not be related to any particular age.

Method

Design:

This is a field experiment so that the participant is in his/her natural setting, so as to make the participant feel more comfortable for them. It is cross sectional because I would be taking sample participants from different age groups. This is preferable to a longitudinal study because it enables the study to be completed within the time allocated for the coursework. It is a controlled observation because I would be observing the participants in an environment free of distractions and set up by me, even though in their own home. However they all would be controlled in the same way. I would be observing the participants with an assistant who will help me conclude the results at the end. This will give some inter rater reliability to the results.

Variables:

There are two variables independent and dependant. The independent variable (IV) of this observation is the age of the participants (age = operationalisation of biological maturity). The Dependant variable (DV) is whether the child seems to look for the object, operationalised as the child putting its hand on the ball after it has been hidden.

Participants:

For this observation I will be using 4 different participants. It is an opportunity sample; the good thing about this method of participant selection is that the participants are familiar and comfortable with the experimenter. Although this may it difficult to generalise. I will be using a 6month old female baby which will be called Participant A. A 10month old baby male baby, which will be called Participant B, a 14month old baby female baby, which will be called Participant C. A 16month old baby male baby, which will be called Participant D. The letters sequences the age of the participants. The youngest participant, Participant A was chosen to investigate whether object permanence is shown in babies under 8months of age.

Apparatus:

The main apparatus was a tennis ball and a screen. A tennis ball was chosen mainly because of its green colour, which might attract the baby’s attention some more. An A3 sized black screen made of cardboard was held in front of the participant. An A3 black sheet was chosen so it was big enough and dark enough not to allow any light threw, instead of a pillow to make it more practical. 2x recording sheet, so that my assistant and I can record the results independently. Eye movement will be recording with any observed eye movement towards the screen after the ball is placed behind it. Movement towards the screen will be recorded with any reaching movement towards the screen after the ball is hidden and retrieving the ball will be measured with any hands on contact with the ball.

Procedure:

The participants were given a set time to play with the ball until agreed that she/he recognises it. After the child found the ball as an interesting object, the ball was taken from the child and hidden behind the screen, this was done while the participant was looking. That is when the observation began. I recorded eye movement, movements to the screen, the length of time taken to retrieve the ball and whether the participant retrieves the ball. I also observed the child’s eye movement if it seemed to focus at the screen, if the child moved towards the screen, and finally if the child finds the ball behind the screen.

I had an assistant with me to record observations in the same way and then at the end of the observation we conclude each other’s idea to come up with the final result. I did this because the observation would be less bias and more effective, with some inter rater reliability

Control:

In order to make the observation fair and valid we had to control the extraneous variables. When observing the child with my assistant the child’s mother will be the only other one with us. This will be done to make the child as comfortable as possible while minimising distractions. The mother did not talk or to give any hints to where the ball is. My assistant and I would not talk during the observation. It will be done in a quiet room, with no main distractions. All appliances will be turned off. E.g. Phones, TV, Radio etc. This is about as controlled and the same time as comfortable you can make the observation for both the participant and the recorder. I got full support for the participant’s parents during the observation and we made sure that the child was comfortable which it was, so at the end of the observation there would be no ethical issues to evaluate.

Results

From the results we can see the younger child doesn’t fulfil the criteria by retrieving the ball and therefore a “NO” for “Retrieves ball”. The older participants all retrieved the ball. Retrieval time for older participants C, and D was considerable shorter than B. There were no disagreements between my assistant and I and therefore the recording of the results were reliable. Participant B showed interest at the start however at around 8 seconds he started to look hesitant and turned away towards his mother, but then went back to complete the task and retrieve the ball. On the other hand participants C and D were much more confident which explains why they took a much shorter time to retrieve the ball than B did.

Discussion

Validity:

Whilst performing the experiment there may have been factors that effected the validity of results, even though my results support the Piaget (1952) results of object permanence in babies, however looking at participant (A) it is evident that after 42 seconds the child seemed to ‘give up’ retrieving the ball, which seems that perhaps the participant lost interest or attention or simply forgot. Maybe the younger child lost interest in the ball, because of the participant’s lack of motility. This suggests that there are problems with operationalising understanding with young babies, due to the fact that there limited attention and memory span can easily effect what you’re studying. The older children may be better at social interaction and therefore they tend to easily understand, and are more likely to want to demonstrate that they can carry out the task you set them successfully. This could be a demand characteristic that applies to the older children but not to the younger ones.

Suggestions for improved validity:

If more participants with a wider age range was used it may have improved validity of the experiment because it will allow me to relate to the Piaget (1952) test even more. Due to the fact that opportunity samples were used, this meant that my assistant and I had to improvise with what we had. If we were able to choose our participants, we could have made the gap between the participant ages less. For example participant (A) is 6 months and participant (B) is 10 months. As an improvement we would try to get an 8-month-old baby as well. If we had a longitudinal experiment would have also improved validity. We would use the same participant starting at 6 months and testing object permanence on the baby every month. However a problem arises with that because the child might get used to the experiment as a game, and react to it differently over time.

We can try to eliminate the demand characteristic of the experiment. We can do this by conducting the experiment without the presence of my assistant and I and only the presence on the child’s mother. However the mother will not be able to interact with the baby.

Reliability:

The issue on reliability is that basically I would have to make my experiment such that over time it is conducted despite of culture and time it will come up with the same results. Things like the mood of the child have a big influence on the reliability of the experiment. If the child is hungry, sad, crying, tiered it will not be able to conduct the experiment as successfully if it is in a state of happiness and playfulness.

An issue to be tackled is how the child familiarises with the ball. Some participants may not be interested in the ball and thus might take them a much longer time to familiarise with it than other participants. Mother interaction with the participants may effect the reliability drastically so that issue has to be dealt with importance.

Suggestions for improved reliability:

As mentioned earlier the mood of this child has a big effect on the reliability of the experiment. So my assistant and I would have to set up a certain criteria that the child has to pass to prove that the child is in a happy/playful mood which will help in conducting the experiment. Different cultures from which the child comes from may not directly effect the reliability because the participants are still too young to get influenced by the culture.

A rubric may have to be provided to the mothers so they will know on what basis they can and cannot interact with their child. This will make the experiment more controlled and fair for all participants. A certain time limit should also be given during the familiarisation process, making it fairer for all the participants, however this make cause a problem with the younger children because they might need much more time that there elder participants to familiarise with the ball.  

Implications of the study:

As shown on the table above, my results support the Piaget (1952) experiment. However this may be due to the memory of the child and not object permanence. My experiment was done in a different culture to what Piaget’s experiment conducted, which suggests cultural differences doesn’t effect the results, just as Piaget’s claims that the experiment is universally correct.

Generalisation of study:

This experiment has several factors that make is had to generalise. Firstly due to the small sample of only

four children it is hard to generalise. However my results seem to support Piaget’s idea that the results are universal because the sample I have used are not similar to Piaget’s children from Geneva because my participants are all from Arabia origin. Due to the fact that I have used an opportunity sample, I know the children personally which may have effected the results due to experimenter bias. However when dealing with children that young experimenter bias is quite unavoidable because the child would have to feel comfortable (presence of mother) and would have to be kept interested by playing with the ball with the mother before hand.

Application of the study to everyday life:

The experiment applies to everyday life in things like childcare, where the caretakers would have to know the child’s limits on what it can do and achieve. Anything you expect the child to use or play with will need to be visible to them at all times.

Word Count: (2,423)

Reference

1. Brain, C. (2000) AS Psychology Approaches and Methods. Nelson Thornes.
2. Jarvis, M., Russell, J., Flanagan, C. & Dolan, L. (2000) Angels on Psychology. Nelson Thornes

Abstract