A Conceptual Investigation of Inferences Drawn from Infant Habituation Research

Abstract

Most of the time, we easily infer from young infants’ behaviours that they are happy, hungry, tired or experiencing teething pain or that they saw the bird land on the windowsill, or many other things. But there are times when it is not so easy to tell how it is with them; for example, when we wonder whether crankiness and crying are due to an upset stomach, headache or impending illness. Whatever the circumstances, to attend to our infants’ needs, we need to bridge an epistemological gap of sorts; a gap between behaviour and our perspective on what the behaviour means. Language is the primary tool we use in our efforts to bridge the gap. Experimental research on infant cognition is similar to our everyday interactions with infants in this fundamental respect. But, of course, in experimental contexts, researchers control variables, know in some detail what they expect to observe, and typically frame what they observe by theory. For many decades, theorizing on human infant cognition has included construction of models of the ‘inner’ machinery of cognition that correspond to what is observed in controlled experiments. Sometimes, researchers have invented constructs for the purpose of bridging the epistemological gap. But those constructs always have been parasitic on our ordinary ways of speaking, as illustrated in researchers’ need to use ordinary concepts to explain the meanings of the constructs.