Nativism Vs Empiricism

This essay will aim to illustrate two methods used by researchers in the domain of cognitive developmental psychology to gain information from infants, evaluate the interpretations of the results from both a nativist and an empiricist perspective, and highlight which perspective, if any, the research supports more. Firstly, the essay will define both the empiricism and nativism before progressing to highlight a main influential theory in cognitive developmental psychology. Secondly, the essay will highlight how research in object permanence is used to gain knowledge from infants before continuing to debate whether the research supports nativist or empiricist arguments. Third, the essay will show how numbers are used to gain knowledge from
Object permanence is the comprehension that objects continue to exist despite not being able to see, or sense is in any way, requiring the ability to form a schema for that object. Piaget’s assumption is that the concept of object permanence develops between the age of eight and twelve months old, a theory which derived from his own research in which he covered a toy with a blanket and observed that the infant did not uncover the toy, thus, motivating him to conclude that the child does not yet posses the concept of object permanence. Despite Piaget’s observations being supported by various studies (Elkind, 1961; Corman & Escalona, 1969) the nature of Piaget’s methodology and interpretation of results has made it an ample area for serious debate between the nativist and empiricist perspectives. For example, from an empiricist perspective, these findings are in line with what you should expect, as the child has not experienced finding a hidden object before so has not been required to learn the procedure for uncovering the toy. However, a nativist counter argument to this study would be that the methodology and interpretation of the results are neither accurate nor representative of infants’
However, they also conducted experiments that did not allow the infants to see objects prior to the screen being raised. Instead, there was a screen with nothing behind it, and then infants watched as an object was placed behind it from the left and again from the right. When the screen was lifted and there was only one object there, the infants were not surprised despite seeing two objects being placed behind the screen. This supports the empiricist stance as if numerical ability was an innate concept then the child would have been able to count that two objects were placed behind the screen and show surprise when presented with one, henceforth, empiricists contend that infants have not yet learned how to count. This argument weakens the nativist position as it points out that Wynn’s (1995) study may have simply shown that infants were aware of an objects existence before the screen occluded