Perception + memory Flashcards
(16 cards)
Audition abilities in infants
Fetuses can hear in the womb and learn from what they hear
- Preference for mothers voice
- Cat in the hat study (DeCasper and Spence, 1986)
Olfaction (smell) abilities in infants
First sense to develop
Newborns are attracted to the smell of breast milk at birth
- Can differentiation between stranger and mothers milk
Taste abilities in infants
Develop on tonged prenatally, learn about flavours via;
- Amniotic fluid
- Breast milk
Carrot juice study (pregnancy - breastfeeding), Mennella et al. (2001)
- Drink while pregnant - Drink while breastfeeding
- Carrot juice - Water
- Water - Carrot juice
- Water - Water
Touch abilities in infants
Newborns show reflective reactions to touch (e.g. rooting reflex - run thumb against newborns cheek they turn head and open mouth towards thumb)
Plays an important role in establishing relationship’s with caregivers (e.g. massage and preterm infants)
Vision abilities in infants
Visual acuity is poor at birth
Measured using Snellen fractional system 6/6 or 20/20 imperial
- Newborns 6/120-140 (infant needs to be 6 meters away from something that can be seen 120-140 meters away with normal vision)
- 3 months 6/30
- 2 months, acuity is like an adult
Infants prefer to look at
- Patterns over plain
- Complex over simple
- Red object over other colours
- Face over non-face stimuli
Face perception (perceptual narrowing)
- Discriminate faces from every species and race
□ Visual paired-comparison tasks
□ Other-race effect
Speech perception (perceptual narrowing)
- Can discriminate phonemes from every language in the world
- With continued expose to native language, they loose the ability to discriminate sounds form other languages
□ Conditioned head turn procedure (CHT)
Conditioned response of baby turning head to monkey or rabbit when they hear a change in the sound
Intermodal perception (perceptual narrowing)
- Ability to discriminate between different languages from visual input along
- E.g. muting the TV and guessing what language they are speaking from the movement of their lips
Habituation/Dishabituation procedure
Loss of this ability was due to (not all) the environment they grew up in, when exposed to both languages you don’t loose the ability to discriminate
What babies can do at early stages
Look at pictures
- .g. visual paired comparison
Suck on pacifier
- E.g. high amplitude sucking
Kick their feet
- E.g. mobile conjugate reinforcement
Manipulate objects
- E.g. deferred imitation
Explain the visual-comparison task
- Familiarisation or habituation
- Delay/retention interval
- Test
○ Familiar stimulus is paired with a novel stimulus - Memory = novel preference
Forgetting = null preference
Explain the high amplitude sucking task
Operant conditioning
Infant learns the contingency between their sucking behaviour and reinforcement (i.e. hearing their mothers voice)
- Sounds that are similar to what infant hears in womb are the most reinforcing
○ E.g. DeCasper and Spence, 1986
Explain the Mobile conjugate reinforcement task
Operant conditioning
- Infant learn the contingency between kicking behaviour and movement in an overhead mobile (i.e. reinforcement)
Explain the Deferred imitation (babies over 6 months) task
The puppet task
○ 3 actions
○ No practice or verbal cueing
- 6-month olds need to see the action repeated 3 times to remember it well
○ Demonstration groups vs. baseline control group
Explain the three aspects of memory
- Encoding
○ Initial learning of information
○ Older infants learn faster than younger infants - Retention
○ How much of the information is retained and still remembered after a delay
○ Older infants remember for longer than younger infants - Retrieval
○ How well we are able to remember something after changing the context or cues associated and generalise it over a range of stimuli
○ Older infants are better able to retrieve memories in different situations that are younger infants-
Explain the Mobile conjugate reinforcement and the train task
Mobile conjugate reinforcement task
- Baby learned about the contingency between kicking and the movement
○ But by 6 months the baby got bored of the task, they start rolling over and away
1. Ribbon attached to empty mobile standard (measuring the Babys baseline kicking)
2. Attached to active mobile stand (reinforcement learning phase)
3. Period of non-reinforcement (attached to empty mobile stand) - measure of memory
After 6 months the baby’s begin to roll away (no longer a developmentally appropriate task)
Train task (6 - 24 months)
- Elaborate train set and baby is sitting in either mums lap or a high chair
Learn when they push the lever the train will start moving (not conjugate, the harder and faster they push it the train would move)
How much do infants remember at 2, 3, 6 months
- 2-month olds remember for 24 hours
- 3-month olds remember for 1 week
- 6-month olds remember for 2 weeks
Reactivation treatment (retrieval issue)
