Providing the Experimental Evidence
	Bill Friedman Adds Nature vs. Nurture to His Experimental Repertoire		Friedman intends to provide the experimental evidence by exposing infants to either a forward or backward version of artificial, computer-animated events that infants could not have witnessed before his testing. He might show them an abstract curved shape that blooms into a larger, lobed form or a large lobed form that shrinks to a smaller shape. Half the infants in his experiment would be exposed to the blooming scenario and half to the shrinking scenario. Four groups of 16 five-month-olds will be involved in the experiment. The first group will receive no training; the second group will receive some training; the third group will receive the more training; and the fourth group will receive the most training. Friedman predicts he will find no preference for either direction (he measures infants' preference by how long they look at the videotape) among the infants with no training; preference for the familiar version among those with only some training; no directional preference (due to a shift from familiarity-based to novelty-based preferences) among those with more training; and preference for the version that is the reverse of the original among those with the most training. If Friedman can demonstrate that the version on which the infant was trained--blooming or shrinking--affects the direction of infants' later preferences, he will bring powerful evidence to the contention that experience--rather than innate genetics--is the basis of the findings of his earlier studies. He would also be safe in assuming that infants are in an early stage of developing representations of gravity-related events.
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