Writing Response #2:   Learning about the physical world

The following papers are required reading for the week of September 28th:

Teglas, E., Vul, E., Girotto, V., Gonzalez, M., Tenenbaum, J. B., Bonatti, L. L. (2011) Pure Reasoning in 12-Month-Old Infants as Probabilistic Inference, Science, 332, 1054-1059.
Baillargeon, R. (1998) Infants' Understanding of the Physical World, in Advances in Psychological Science, Vol. 2: Biological and Cognitive Aspects, M. Sabourin, F. Craik, R. Michele (Eds.), Hove England: Psychology Press/Erlbaum, 503-529.

In advance of Wednesday's presentation and discussion of this reading, you should submit a response to the following question:

Baillargeon (1998) presents a framework for describing how infants learn about physical objects and how they behave, which consists of initial concepts that may be innate or learned during an infant's first couple months of visual experience, and variables that capture increasingly more complex object properties or constraints that influence their behavior. Drawing from both papers, describe three examples of physical behaviors or interactions between objects that are learned during the first year of life, and for each example, note the initial concept(s) that may be innate, and the variables or factors that may be learned from experience.

You should write at most one page (500 words) in response to this question. In addition, you should also submit a question of your own, related to the reading. This writing assignment is due on Tuesday, September 29 at midnight and should be submitted to the 9.523 course site on stellar using your private account: https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/9/fa15/9.523/. If you have a problem with submitting to stellar, please send your response to Ellen Hildreth at ehildreth@wellesley.edu.