Publications – Infant Cognition Lab

Please Note: These electronic articles are posted for individual, non-commercial use to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly work. They are intended for teaching and training purposes only. Articles may not be reposted or disseminated without permission by the copyright holder. Copyright holders retain all rights as indicated within each article.

2021 –

Jin, K., Ting, F., He, Z., & Baillargeon, R. (2024). Infants expect some degree of positive and negative reciprocity between strangers. Nature Communications, 15, 7742. For a blog discussion of this article, see: https://communities.springernature.com/posts/infants-expect-some-degree-of-positive-and-negative-reciprocity-between-strangers.

Lin, Y., Stavans, M., Li, X., & Baillargeon, R. (2024). Infants can use temporary or scant categorical information to individuate objects. Cognitive Psychology, 149, 101640.

Margoni, F., Surian, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2024). The violation-of-expectation paradigm: A conceptual overview. Psychological Review, 131(3), 716-748.

Quesque, F., Apperly, I., Baillargeon, R., Baron-Cohen, S., …, & Brass, M. (2024). Defining key concepts for mental state attribution. Communications Psychology, 2, 29.

Dasgupta, A., Duan, J., Lin, Y., Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Tan, C. (2023). A benchmark for modeling violation-of-expectation in physical reasoning across event categories. In M. Goldwater, F. K. Anggoro, B. K. Hayes, & D. C. Ong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 45, 1755-1762.

Bian, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). When are similar individuals a group? Early reasoning about similarity and in-group support. Psychological Science, 33, 752-764.

Choi, Y., Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). Can 5-month-old infants consider the perspective of a novel eyeless agent? New evidence for early mentalistic reasoning. Child Development, 93, 571-581.

Lin, Y., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). Infants’ physical reasoning and the cognitive architecture that supports it. In O. Houdé & G. Borst (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of cognitive development (pp. 168-194). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Schuwerk, T., et al. (2022). Action anticipation based on an agent’s epistemic state in toddlers and adults. Child Development, In-Principle Acceptance of Registered Report Stage 1: Study Design.

Scott, R. M., Roby, E., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). How sophisticated is infants’ theory of mind? In O. Houdé & G. Borst (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of cognitive development (pp. 242-268). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Weihs, L., Yuile, A. R., Baillargeon, R., Fisher, C. L., Marcus, G., Mottaghi, R., & Kembhavi, A. (2022). Benchmarking progress to infant-level physical reasoning in AI. Transactions on Machine Learning Research, published 10/2022.

Lin, Y., Li, J., Gertner, Y., Ng, W., Fisher, C. L., & Baillargeon, R. (2021). How do the object-file and physical-reasoning systems interact? Evidence from priming effects with object arrays or novel labels. Cognitive Psychology, 125, 101368.

Ting, F., & Baillargeon, R. (2021). Toddlers draw broad negative inferences from wrongdoers’ moral violations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 118(39), e2109045118.

Ting, F., He, Z., & Baillargeon, R. (2021). Five-month-old infants attribute inferences based on general knowledge to agents. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 208, 105126.

2016 – 2020

Buyukozer Dawkins, M., Ting, F., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2020). Early moral cognition: A principle-based approach. In D. Poeppel, G. R. Mangun, & M. S. Gazzaniga (Eds.-in-chief), The cognitive neurosciences, 6th ed. (pp. 7-16). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Setoh, P., Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R (2020). Reply to Fenici and Garofoli: Why would toddlers act on low-level associations only when processing demands are reduced? Human Development, 64(1), 7-9.

Ting, F., Buyukozer Dawkins, M., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2020). Principles and concepts in early moral cognition. In J. Decety (Ed.), The social brain: A developmental perspective (pp. 41-65). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Buyukozer Dawkins, M., Sloane, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2019). Do infants in the first year of life expect equal resource allocations? Frontiers in Psychology, 10, article 116 (special issue on “Early Moral Cognition and Behavior” edited by J. Sommerville, K. Lucca, & J. K. Hamlin).

Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2019) Infants expect leaders to right wrongs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 116(33), 16292-16301.

Stavans, M., Lin, Y., Wu, D., & Baillargeon, R. (2019). Catastrophic individuation failures in infancy: A new model and predictions. Psychological Review, 126(2), 196-225.

Ting, F., He, Z., & Baillargeon, R. (2019). Toddlers and infants expect individuals to refrain from helping an ingroup victim’s aggressor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 116(13), 6025-6034

Baillargeon, R., Buttelmann, D., & Southgate, V. (2018). Invited Commentary: Interpreting failed replications of early false-belief findings: Methodological and theoretical considerations. Cognitive Development, 46, 112-124.

Bian, L., Sloane, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2018). Infants expect ingroup support to override fairness when resources are limited. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 115(11), 2705-2710

Jin, K., Houston, J. L., Baillargeon, R., Groh, A. M, & Roisman, G. I. (2018). Young infants expect an unfamiliar adult to comfort a crying baby: Evidence from a standard violation-of-expectation task and a novel infant-triggered-video task. Cognitive Psychology, 102, 1-20.

Margoni, F., Baillargeon, R., & Surian, L. (2018). Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 115(38), E8835-E8843.

Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2018). Four-month-old infants individuate and track simple tools following functional demonstrations. Developmental Science, 21(1), e12500 (first published online 20 Nov 2016).

Baillargeon, R., & DeJong, G. F. (2017). Explanation-based reasoning in infancy. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (special issue on explanation), 24(5), 1511-1526.

Bian, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2017). False Beliefs. In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (pp. 1–13). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Jin, K., & Baillargeon, R. (2017). Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 114(31), 8199-8204.

Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2017). Early false-belief understanding. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21 (4), 237-249.

Scott, R. M., Setoh, P., & Baillargeon, R. (2017). Reply to Rubio-Fernández et al.: Different false-belief tasks impose different processing demands for toddlers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 114(19), E3751-E3752.

Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & Bian, L. (2016). Psychological reasoning in infancy. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 159-18

Levine, S. C., & Baillargeon, R. (2016). Different faces of language in numerical development: Exact number and individuation. In D. Barner & A. S. Baron (Eds.), Core knowledge and conceptual change (pp. 127-150). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Setoh, P., Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2016). Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 113, 13360-13365.

Wang, S., Zhang, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2016). Young infants view physically possible support events as unexpected: New evidence for rule learning. Cognition, 157, 100-105

2011 – 2015

Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., He, Z., Sloane, S., Setoh, P., Jin, K., Wu, D., & Bian, L. (2015). Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver (Eds), E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Assoc. Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology: Vol.1. Attitudes and social cognition (pp. 79-150). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Scott, R. M., Richman, J. C., & Baillargeon, R. (2015). Infants understand deceptive intentions to implant false beliefs about identity: New evidence for early mentalistic reasoning. Cognitive Psychology, 82, 32-56.

Baillargeon, R., Setoh, P., Sloane, S., Jin, K., & Bian, L. (2014). Infant social cognition: Psychological and sociomoral reasoning. In M. S. Gazzaniga & G. R. Mangun (Eds.-in-chief), The cognitive neurosciences (5th ed., pp. 7-14). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2014). How fresh a look? (invited commentary on C. Heyes’s article, “False belief in infancy: A fresh look”). Developmental Science. Published online 25 Mar 2014, doi: 10.1111/desc.12173

Song, H., Baillargeon, R., & Fisher, C. (2014). The development of infants’ use of novel verbal information when reasoning about others’ actions. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e92387. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092387

Baillargeon, R., He, Z., Setoh, P., Scott, R. M., Sloane, S., & Yang, D. Y.-J. (2013). False-belief understanding and why it matters: The social-acting hypothesis. In M. R. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp.88-95). NY: Oxford University Press.

Barrett, H. C., Broesch, T., Scott, R. M., He, Z., Baillargeon, R., Wu, D., Bolz, M., Henrich, J., Setoh, P., Wang, J., & Laurence, S. (2013). Early false-belief understanding in traditional non-western societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B (Biological Sciences), vol. 280, no. 1755

Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2013). Do infants really expect others to act efficiently? A critical test of the rationality principle. Psychological Science, 24, 466-474.

Setoh, P., Wu, D., Baillargeon, R., & Gelman, R. (2013). Young infants have biological expectations about animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 110 (40), 15937-15942.

Yang, D. Y.-J., & Baillargeon, R. (2013). Difficulty in understanding social acting (but not false beliefs) mediates the link between autistic traits and ingroup relationships. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,43 (9), 2199-2206.

Baillargeon, R., & Carey S. (2012). Core cognition and beyond: The acquisition of physical and numerical knowledge. In S. Pauen (Ed.), Early childhood development and later outcome (pp. 33-65). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Baillargeon, R., Stavans, M., Wu, D., Gertner, R., Setoh, P., Kittredge, A. K., & Bernard, A. (2012). Object individuation and physical reasoning in infancy: An integrative account. Language Learning and Development, 8, 4-46.

Hauf, P., Paulus, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2012). Infants use compression information to infer objects’ weights: Examining cognition, exploration, and prospective action in a preferential-reaching task. Child Development, 83, 1978-1995.

He, Z., Bolz, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2012). 2.5-year-olds succeed at a verbal anticipatory-looking false-belief task. British Journal of Developmental Psychology (special issue), 30, 14-29.

Scott, R. M., He, Z., Baillargeon, R., & Cummins, D. (2012). False-belief understanding in 2.5-year-olds: Evidence from two novel verbal spontaneous-response tasks. Developmental Science, 15, 181-193.

Sloane, S., Baillargeon, R., & Premack, D. (2012). Do infants have a sense of fairness? Psychological Science, 23, 196-204.

Baillargeon, R., Li, J., Gertner, Y., & Wu, D. (2011). How do infants reason about physical events? In U. Goswami (Ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development, second edition (pp. 11-48). Oxford: Blackwell.

He, Z., Bolz, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2011). False-belief understanding in 2.5-year-olds: Evidence from violation-of-expectation change-of-location and unexpected-contents tasks. Developmental Science, 14, 292-305.

2006 – 2010

Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & He, Z. (2010). False-belief understanding in infants. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 110-118.

Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2010). Toward a mentalistic account of early psychological reasoning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 301-307.

Scott, R. M., Baillargeon, R., Song, H., & Leslie, A. M. (2010). Attributing false beliefs about non-obvious properties at 18 months. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 366-395.

Baillargeon, R., Li, J., Ng, W., & Yuan, S. (2009). An account of infants’ physical reasoning. In A. Woodward & A. Needham (Eds.), Learning and the infant mind (pp. 66-116). New York: Oxford University Press.

Baillargeon, R., Wu, D., Yuan, S., Li, J., & Luo, Y. (2009). Young infants’ expectations about self-propelled objects. In B. Hood & L. Santos (Eds.), The origins of object knowledge (pp. 285-352). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Luo, Y., Kaufman, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2009). Young infants’ reasoning about physical events involving inert and self-propelled objects. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 441-486.

Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2009). Which penguin is this? Attributing false beliefs about object identity at 18 months (special issue in developmental neuroscience). Child Development, 80, 1172-1196.

Baillargeon, R. (2008). Innate ideas revisited: For a principle of persistence in infants’ physical reasoning. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 2-13.

Hespos, S. J., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Young infants’ actions reveal their developing knowledge of support variables: Converging evidence for violation-of-expectation findings. Cognition, 107, 304-316.

Song, H., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Infants’ reasoning about others’ false perceptions. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1789-1795.

Song, H., Onishi, K. H., Baillargeon, R., & Fisher, C. (2008). Can an agent’s false belief be corrected by an appropriate communication? Psychological reasoning in 18-month-old infants. Cognition, 109, 295-315.

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Can infants be “taught” to attend to a new physical variable in an event category? The case of height in covering events. Cognitive Psychology, 56, 284-326.

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Detecting impossible changes in infancy: A three-system account. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 17-23.

Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2007). Do 12.5-month-old infants consider what objects others can see when interpreting their actions? Cognition, 105, 489-512.

Onishi, K. H., Baillargeon, R., & Leslie, A. M. (2007). 15-month-old infants detect violations in pretend scenarios. Acta Psychologica (special issue), 124, 106-128.

Song, H., & Baillargeon, R. (2007). Can 9.5-month-old infants attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action on objects? Acta Psychologica (special issue), 124, 79-105.

Baillargeon, R., Li, J., Luo, Y., & Wang, S. (2006). Under what conditions do infants detect continuity violations? In M. H. Johnson, & Y. Munakata (Eds.), Processes of change in brain and cognitive development: Attention and Performance XXI (pp. 163-188). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hespos, S. J., & Baillargeon, R. (2006). Décalage in infants’ knowledge about occlusion and containment events: Converging evidence from action tasks. Cognition, 99, B31-B41.

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2006). Infants’ physical knowledge affects their change detection. Developmental Science, 9, 173-181.

2001 – 2005

Baillargeon, R. (2005). La physique démarre au berceau. La Recherche, no 388 (juillet-aout), 57-61.

Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Can a self-propelled box have a goal? Psychological reasoning in 5-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 16, 601-608.

Luo, Y., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). When the ordinary seems unexpected: Evidence for incremental physical knowledge in young infants. Cognition, 95, 297-328.

Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science, 8 April, 255-258.

Song, H., Baillargeon, R., & Fisher, C. (2005). Can infants attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action? Cognition, 98, B45-B55.

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Inducing infants to detect a physical violation in a single trial. Psychological Science, 16, 542-549.

Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Paterson, S. (2005). Detecting continuity violations in infancy: A new account and new evidence from covering and tube events. Cognition, 95, 129-173.

Baillargeon, R. (2004). Can 12 large clowns fit in a Mini Cooper? Or when are beliefs and reasoning explicit and conscious? Developmental Science, 7, 422-424.

Baillargeon, R. (2004). Infants’ physical world. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 89-94.

Baillargeon, R. (2004). Infants’ reasoning about hidden objects: Evidence for event-general and event-specific expectations (article with peer commentaries and response, listed below). Developmental Science, 7, 391-424.

Baillargeon, R. (2004). Le raisonnement des bébés à propos des objects cachés: Des principes généraux et des attentes spécifiques. In R. Lécuyer (Ed.), Psychologie le dévelopment du nourrisson (pp. 221-270). Paris: Dunod. [translated by Roger Lécuyer, translation revised by RB).

Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Brueckner, L. (2004). Young infants’ reasoning about hidden objects: Evidence from violation-of-expectation tasks with test trials only. Cognition, 93, 167-198.

Aguiar, A., & Baillargeon, R. (2003). Perseverative responding in a violation-of-expectation task in 6.5-month-old infants. Cognition, 88, 277-316.

Luo, R., Baillargeon, R., Brueckner, L., & Munakata, Y. (2003). Reasoning about a hidden object after a delay: Evidence for robust representations in 5-month-old infants. Cognition, 88, B23-B32.

Wang, S., Kaufman, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2003). Should all stationary objects move when hit? Developments in infants’ causal and statistical expectations about collision events. Infant Behavior and Development (special issue), 26, 529-568.

Aguiar, A., & Baillargeon, R. (2002). Developments in young infants’ reasoning about occluded objects. Cognitive Psychology, 45, 267-336.

Baillargeon, R. (2002). The acquisition of physical knowledge in infancy: A summary in eight lessons. In U. Goswami (Ed.), Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development (pp. 46-83). Oxford: Blackwell.

Baillargeon, R., & Luo, Y. (2002). Development of the object concept. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (Vol. 3, pp. 387-391). London, England: Nature Publishing Group.

Baillargeon, R., & Wang, S. (2002). Event categorization in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 85-93.

Baillargeon, R. (2001). Infants’ physical knowledge: Of acquired expectations and core principles. In E. Dupoux (ed.), Language, brain, and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler (pp. 341-361). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Also in French: Les connaissances du nourisson en physique: Attentes acquises et principes de base. In E. Dupoux (Ed.), Les languages du cerveau: Textes en l’honneur de Jacques Mehler (pp. 341-361). Paris: Editions Odile Jacob].

Hespos, S. J., & Baillargeon, R. (2001). Infants’ knowledge about occlusion and containment events: A surprising discrepancy. Psychological Science, 12, 141-147.

Hespos, S. J., & Baillargeon, R. (2001). Reasoning about containment events in very young infants. Cognition, 78, 207-245.