Lecture 8 - Sensory Development in Infants

Question 1

How early are new-borns capable of recognising faces?

Answer 1

Within a day of birth

Question 2

How can we tell that new-borns recognising faces is not due to factors other than visual observation?

Answer 2

This occurs even when olfactory cues are removed and when inadvertent visual cues (such as facial expressions) are controlled

Question 3

How can we observe infant’s processes if they don’t talk?

Answer 3

Via their limited behaviours (i.e. changes in heartbeat, sucking their thumb, looking and crawling/walking later in life)

Question 4

How can we use sucking to observe infant’s perception?

Answer 4

We observe the changes in sucking. We give them a dummy, establish a basic sucking rate and then see how this changes when they are exposed to a stimulus.

Question 5

How can we tell (via sucking) if an infant is excited by a stimulus)

Answer 5

They will suck more after being exposed to the stimulus

Question 6

How can we tell that an infant is not reacting a stimulus via sucking?

Answer 6

If there is no change in sucking rate after being exposed to a stimulus

Question 7

How can we observe infant participation via looking?

Answer 7

We can see what they perceive based on how their focus of vision/where they look changes when they are shown different stimuli

Question 8

How much can new-born infants see?

acuity, range etc.

Answer 8

Everything will look slightly fuzzy and dim. They can pretty much only see light, shape and movement. They are not capable of fixation and their range of vision is about 30cm.

Question 9

How does an infant’s vision develop by 1-2 months?

Answer 9

They can now fixate and distinguish highly contrasting colours.

Question 10

How does an infant’s vision develop by 4 months?

Answer 10

Depth perception improves, as does colour vision. They can now follow objects with their eyes without having to turn their head.

Question 11

How does an infant’s vision develop by 8 months?

Answer 11

The range of vision increases, so infants can now recognise familiar people from across a room

Question 12

How does an infant’s vision develop by 1 year?

Answer 12

Vision is now very similar to/nearly on par with adult levels.

Question 13

How does an infant’s visual perception develop as they grow up?

Answer 13

The infant’s visual perception gets fine tuned to more easily recognise things they regularly see in their environment. This then allows them to later fine tune their abilities, such as facial recognition.

Question 14

What is the “other race” effect?

Answer 14

Children become better and better at distinguishing between faces they don’t see often (i.e. the outgroup).

Question 15

Describe a study that showed that shaping a child’s experiences can allow them to retain the ability to distinguish unfamiliar faces

Answer 15

In the first condition, 9 month old Caucasian children were consistently shown picture books with Caucasian faces over a period of time. They lost the ability to distinguish/recognise Chinese faces. In the other condition, 9 month old Caucasian children were consistently shown picture books with Chinese faces over a period of time. These infants retained the ability to recognise Chinese faces.

Question 16

What is habituation?

Answer 16

A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations

Question 17

What is the Fagan test of intelligence?

Answer 17

It uses the amount of time that infants spend looking at a new object to determine their cognitive capacity. Quicker habituation reflects more efficient information processing.

Question 18

How does the Fagan test of intelligence relate to intelligence in later childhood?

Answer 18

higher scores on the test can be correlated with higher intelligence later in life.

Question 19

How early can infants perceive sound? Who discovered this?

Answer 19

Sounds can be perceived in the womb prior to birth. This was found by changes in foetal heart rate in response to acoustic noise (Kisilevsky et al). ( month old foetuses are even able to recognise their mother’s voices.

Question 20

How did De Casper and Spence show that infants both perceive and process information in the womb?

Answer 20

Pregnant women read a 3 minute story aloud for the last 6 weeks of their pregnancy. Just after birth their new-born children were read either the story their mother read to them in the womb or an unfamiliar story. The new-borns preferred the familiar story, even when the story was read by a stranger. This preference was measured through changes of sucking rate. The control group, who were not read a story in the womb, did not show any preference.

Question 21

How good is infant’s hearing?

Answer 21

Very good, they can even distinguish between the phonemes of non-native languages.

Question 22

How does an infant’s language perception become more specialised?

Answer 22

At first, infants can distinguish phonemes of many sounds, including non-native languages. They later specialise this by focusing more on phonemes from their own language as they are exposed to this more in their environment. This makes auditory processing more swift and precise.

Question 23

What is motherese?

Answer 23

baby talk (infant directed speech)

Question 24

How can motherese be used to teach infants language?

Answer 24

They prefer it to usual adult speech. they pay more attention to speech when it has higher and wider pitch range. This then allows them to break down and process speech more easily.