4: Infant Cognitive and Perceptual Measures Flashcards
(36 cards)
List four response measures used with infants.
Searching: Piaget, object permanence and coordination of secondary circular reactions.
Looking/Visual Fixation: limited in young infants by visual system.
Grasping or Reaching, Touching: not before 3 months.
Sucking (HAS): faster and harder when interested, irregular.
Preferential looking provides evidence of what two things?
Discriminability, preferences.
Discriminability is a prerequisite for _____ but not visa versa.
Preference.
What are three things infants prefer to look at? What limits them?
Moderately complex stimuli.
Human faces.
Prefer to look at stripes (compare striped pattern to grey).
Limited by vision.
Vision is poor at birth. Why is this?
Acuity about 1/30th adult level, 20/600.
Habituation provides evidence of what three things?
Seeing/hearing.
Can control response (e.g., control eye movement).
Recognition memory.
Dishabituation provides evidence of what?
Can perceive stimulus as different.
The rate of habituation is of interest to researchers. Provide two reasons why.
Fast vs. slow habituators differ significantly years later.
Best infancy predictor of child and adult IQ.
What is head turning? Describe its evolution.
Sound localization from birth.
Disappears between 2-3 months, believed to go from reflex (subcortical) to voluntary head control (cortical).
Describe the difference in health acceleration vs. deceleration between younger infants and older infants when presented with novel stimuli.
Heart rate accelerates in younger, decelerates in older. In older infants, acceleration = fear, deceleration = interest.
Describe the six steps in the history of developmental methods.
Baby biographies (1800 - 1900s): e.g., Darwin.
Systematic observations (Baldwin, 1890s, exiled from field).
Questionnaires (Hall, 1890s).
School testing/assessments (IQ tests, Binet & Simon, 1905).
Study of “defective” children (Freud/Vygotsky, 1920s 1930s).
“Clinical” methods (experimental manipulations): Piaget w/ infants’ motor behaviour (1930s onward), Fantz w/ infants’ looking behaviour (1960s onward).
List four reflexes used in measurement.
Stepping, sound localization, sucking, looming (can perceive depth).
How does smiling evolve in infants?
Social at 6 months, mirror-recognition w/ peers.
List three paradigms in which crying is used as a dependent variable.
“Hold hands” paradigm.
Strange situation and attachment.
Still face paradigm.
Moms’ texting affects what paradigm?
Still face.
Describe the categorization of male and female faces. What is the preference for infants?
By 3 months, can tell male and female faces apart.
80% prefer females, 20% males, but important to account for primary caregiver.
The decline in the first phase of habituation is what?
Known as “getting bored” and suggests evidence of recognition memory.
In operant conditioning, the response must occur _____.
Naturally.
Describe the two phases of operant conditioning.
Learning phase: measure baseline rate. Present stimulus, wait for response, reward it. Continue and response should increase.
Test phase: have stimulus without reward to see if response higher than baseline. Increased frequency in presence of stimulus indicates learning (after a delay, implies recognition memory).
Memory is very _____-specific in young.
Context.
Imitation is thought to be a window into infants’ _____ processes.
Cognitive.
Piaget thought imitation appeared at what age?
8 months.
What are the three abilities required in “genuine” imitation?
Discriminate visually behaviour of actor.
Store representation of actor’s movements.
Formulate behavioural response (without seeing self), match it to stored representation of visual information.
Evidence of genuine imitation implies _____ representations, not _____ representations.
Cognitive; perceptual.
