Module 5 - Perception, Action and Learning in Infancy

Question 1

define sensations

Answer 1

the detection and processing of basic information from the external world by receptors in the sense organs and then relayed to associated brain regions

Question 2

define perception

Answer 2

process of organizing and interpreting incoming sensory information about the objects, events and spatial layout of the world around us

Question 3

define the preferential-looking technique

Answer 3

• two different visual stimuli are displayed side by side
• if the infant looked longer at one of the two things, we can infer that the baby can discriminate between the two and that they prefer one over the other
• infants were shown to have looked at patterns more than a plain image

Question 4

define visual acuity

Answer 4

to determine how sharply or clearly infants can actually see
- in adults, this is normally tested by using eyes charts with letters and such on them

Question 5

define contrast sensitivity

Answer 5

being able to detect a pattern only when it is composed of highly contrasting elements, young infants have poor ability of this.
- this can be due to the immaturity of their cone cells (light-sensitive neurons that are highly concentrated in the central region of the retina, that are involved in seeing fine detail and colour)

Question 6

define smooth pursuit eye movement

Answer 6

when a viewer’s gaze shifts at the same speed and angle as a moving object, keeping it in view. Infants don’t develop this until about 4 months old
- visual scanning in one of the few ways that infants have active control over what they observe and learn

Question 7

define perceptual constancy

Answer 7

the perception of objects as being of constant size, shape, colour, etc, in te spite of physical differences in the retinal image of the object

Question 8

define object segregation

Answer 8

the identification of separate objects is a visual array

Question 9

define common movement

Answer 9

powerful cue that leads infants to perceive disparate elements moving together as parts of a unitary object
- study with rod behind the box, full length rode or 2 separate rods
- 4 months use common movement as a cue but newborns do not, showing that you must learn this as you grow

Question 10

define the violation-of-expectancy

Answer 10

a procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest if it goes against something the infants already knows
- study with possible and non-possible conditions

Question 11

define optical expansion

Answer 11

when visual images of an object increase in size as it comes towards us, occluding more and more of the background

Question 12

define binocular disparity

Answer 12

that eyes never send the exact same signal to the brain

Question 13

define stereopsis

Answer 13

the process by which the visual cortex combines the differing neural signals caused by binocular disparity, resulting in the perception of depth

Question 14

define monocular depth cues

Answer 14

perceptual cues of depth that can be perceived by one eyes alone. also known as pictorial cues because they can be used to portray depth in pictures

Question 15

define auditory localization

Answer 15

the perception of the spatial location of a sound source

Question 16

define perceptual narrowing

Answer 16

developmental changes in which experience finetunes the perceptual system

Question 17

define intermodal perception

Answer 17

the combining of info from two or more sensory systems
- 4 months old can integrate visual and auditory information, even when the connection between sight and sound is very abstract (orientate their attention to which video would seem to best match the presented audio)
- this matters when it comes to how we integrate lip movements when processing speech sounds (McGurk Effect)

Question 18

define reflexes

Answer 18

fixed patterns of actions tat occur in response to a particular stimulating

Question 19

what are some of the neonatal reflexes that infants participate in?

Answer 19

rooting: turning of the head and opening of the mouth in the direction of a touch
sucking/swallowing: oral response when the roof of the mouth is stimulated
tonic neck: when head is turned to one side, that side of the body will stay straight while the other side of the body will flex the limbs
mor: throwing back the head and extending the arms in response to loud sound or sudden movement
grasping: closing fingers around object that is pressed against the palm
stepping: stepping/dancing with the feet when being help upright with feet touching a solid surface

Question 20

define affordances

Answer 20

the possibilities for action offered, or afforded, by objects and situations
- infants discover these affordances by figuring out the relation between their own bodies and abilities and the things around them

Question 21

define the preferential-looking paradigm

Answer 21

• method for studying visual attention in infants
• showing them two objects and measure the time spent looking at each
• can only make assumptions because we can never be too sure
• using eye-tracking devices, manual coding, and frame-by-frame

longer looking time can infer:
- infants can discriminate between the items
- infant has a preference for one of the items

Question 22

define the habituation paradigm

Answer 22

• habituation is a decrease in response to repeated or continued stimulation (getting used to a fan sound)
• dishabituation is when a new stimulus rekindles interest following habituation (fan makes new noise to grab your attention)

Question 23

vision in infancy

Answer 23

• initially they have 20/120 vision
• immature cone cells only catch about 2% of light
• get adult-like vision around 8 months
• low visual acuity
• poor contrast sensitivity

Question 24

how do infants grow in their colour perception?

Answer 24

first month: little evidence of colour perception
two: vision virtually identical to that of adults and can see full spectrum of colours
five: evidence of categorical discrimination, the brain responds differently to shifts between categories (blue to green) and not within categories (blue to light blue)

Question 25

define visual scanning

Answer 25

• infants cannot smoothly track moving stimuli until about 4 months
• this is a function of neurological development
• visual behaviours will change very rapidly (ex. when looking at faces, they will first start by looking at edges and contours and then will eventually look at the finer details)

Question 26

define face perception

Answer 26

• faces are the most important source of social information
• by 1 year, they will start looking at other things such as toys and such
• sensitive to the configuration of features too (upright vs. inverted face)
• infants will look for more features in the top half vs. the lower half
• they will gravitate to images that resembled faces

Question 27

define perceptual narrowing

Answer 27

• infants get better at discriminating among the kinds of faces they frequently experience

study:
- 6 month, 9 month and adults can all discriminate between the 2 human faces
- 6 months olds are better at discriminating between monkey faces better than older groups
- older people love the ability to tell other faces apart that are not humans
- babies raised in the same race household can discriminate between their race very well but lack when looking at the other race (other-race effect)

Question 28

define object perception

Answer 28

• perceptual constancy
• study with newborns recognizing size changes with distance (innate understanding)
• study with rods behind box

Question 29

define depth perception

Answer 29

• a need to interpret 2D retinal image as a 3D representation of the world
• study with showing infants a circle on a screen that will grow in size
• 1 month olds will blink when it comes closer (optical expansion)
• 4 months use their brain to know the difference between the image from each each to calculate the depth(binocular disparity)
• 7 months start to use monocular (one eyes) depth cues to know the relative size, interposition and texture of the object

Question 30

define auditory localization

Answer 30

• newborns will turn their hands to where they think the sound is coming from
• adults will use both ears to determine sounds (binaural disparity = difference in information between your ears)
• may require intermodal perception to make a spatial map in their head

Question 31

define music perception

Answer 31

• infants’ music perception is very similar to that of adults
• put infants near the speaker and turn on the light to get attention
• babies that will look at the music longer will show that they like that kind of music more
• babies prefer consonant over dissonant sounds (regardless of prior exposure)
• preference for infant-directed singing (smiles and positive emotions)
• perceptual narrowing - examples with detecting between and out of key changes within a music sequence

Question 32

how do motor milestones differ across countries?

Answer 32

different culturs and countries bring up thier children differently making milestones happen at different times

ex. the percent of 5 month olds who can sit up on their own in USA is 17% whereas in Cameroon is 92%

Question 33

define psychology is WEIRD

Answer 33

W: western cultures are normally the samples
E: educated people are the normal participants
I: industrialized countries
R: rich people
D: democratic

*reminder that finding might not be as universal as we think, how we generalize the finding of the studies and getting the external valdiity

Question 34

explain the boundary of learning what we can and cant do with our bodies

Answer 34

• integrating perception and action
  ex. Visual cliff studies
• aiming to look at children’s fear of height and depth perception
• 8-month-olds would fall right off the edge
• 9 months would be hesitant to move
• when they learned to walk, they would also just walk right off the edge
• it has to do with how babies are still learning to integrate perceptual info with new motor behaviour

Question 35

define statistical learning

Answer 35

• the process of detecting and learning from statistical patterns in one’s environment
  —> how often do certain events occur?
  —> what events typically occur together?
• often requires surprisingly little experience
  Fast, incidental, effortless, instinctive

study: infants were shown shapes, and some were always followed by the same shape. when the pattern went off track, the babies looked longer, without being taught anythin

Question 36

define imitation

Answer 36

• starts to happen after 6 months even after a 24-hour delay
• for 14 months, can imitate after a week’s delay
  study: with parent pushing a button with her head in two condition, having a blanket wrapped around her and having her arms free, children also used their heads as they thought about the they used their head for a reason but they just don’t know why

Question 37

where does imitation come from?

Answer 37

• mirror neurons
• activate when observing an action as well as when completing that action

Question 38

define rational learning

Answer 38

• ability to use prior experience to predict what will occur in the future
• violating of expectation procedure: showing infants different outcomes to an event and measuring looking time to the outcome (longer looking time = more surprise of the outcome)

study: box of mostly red balls with a few white balls. infants didn’t look too long when the expected outcomes were mostly red but looked a lot longer when more white balls were pulled out. done with 8-month-old children

Question 39

what are some of the major milestones infants will reach in their first 15 months?

Answer 39

picture in onenote
- keep in mid that all info gathered is focusing on children in North America, so we cannot generalize this to the rest of the world as children grow differently in different cultures
- difference in the course of motor development reflect the contexts in which infants are developping

Question 40

what are the modern views on motor development?

Answer 40

• early on, they though infants motor development is governed y brain maturation
• now, theorist emphasize that early development results from a confluence of numerous factors such as developing neural mechanisms, increase in stregnhtm postures control, balance, etc.

Question 41

explain the development of reaching

Answer 41

• once an infat can reach and grasp object, they no longer have to wait for the world to come to them
• this simple behvaiuor involved complex interactions of multiple components
• infants are limited to pre-reaching movements (clumsy swiping movememtns by young infants towards objects they see)
• 3-4 months they will start to try and grab things even when it is initially bad

Question 42

explain the development of self-locomotion

Answer 42

• at 8 month, infants become capable of self-locomotion (moving around in their environment on their own)
• first usually occurs in crawling, then hands and knees, and eventually walking (11-12 months)
• children adjust their mode of locomotion according to their perception of the properties of the surface they want to traverse

Question 43

define scale errors

Answer 43

the attempt by a young child to perform and action on a miniature object this impossible due to the large discrepancy in the relative sizes of the child and the object
- ex. infants trying to sit in a tiny dollhouse sized chair

Question 43

define classical conditioning

Answer 43

a form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus with a stimulus that always evokes a particular reflexive response
- ex. when an infants sucking motions begins to occur at the mere sight of the bottle or breast
- nipple in the mouth is the unconditioned stimulus, sucking relfex in the unconditioned response, the breast/bottle is the conditioned stimulus, and the reflexive response becomes as learned behvaiuo known as a condition responses

Question 44

define instrumental conditioning/operant conditioning

Answer 44

learning the relation between one’s own behaviour and the consequences that result from it
- involves positive reinforcement, a reward that reliability follows a behaviours and increase the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated

Question 45

define active learning

Answer 45

learning by engaging with the world rather than passively observing objects and events