About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the Violation-of-Expectation (VoE) looking time method, focusing in particular on: (i) how it has revolutionised our understanding of infant cognition since the 1980s; (ii) a recap of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and a discussion around why his reliance on search tasks to measure infant cognition may be problematic; (iii) some alternative measures that can be used to investigate cognitive development, namely looking behaviour; (iv) an early study in this area by Fantz (1964); (v) the more recently developed VoE method which tests infants’ grasp of basic physical laws (e.g. solidity, gravity) by measuring how long they look at expected and unexpected events.

About the lecturer

Dr Richard O’Connor is a cognitive developmental psychology in the Faculty of Health Sciences and School of Psychology and Social Work at the University of Hull. Dr O’Connor’s research interests include theory of mind and word learning. Some of Dr O’Connor’s recent publications include Autistic Adults Show Similar Performance and Sensitivity to Social Cues on a Visual Perspective Taking Task as Non-autistic Adults (In Press) and Stroop interference is a composite phenomenon: Evidence from distinct developmental trajectories of its components (2020).