Sensory & Motor Development 1 Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in Sensory & Motor Development 1 Deck (26)
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1
Q

What is the foetus?

A

Prior to birth

2
Q

At what stage is the neonate?

A

The first few days post-birth

3
Q

At what stage is infancy?

A

up to around 2 years

4
Q

At what stage is preschool?

A

around 2-4 years

5
Q

At what stage is childhood?

A

5 years -adolescence

6
Q

At what stage is adolescence?

A

around 12-18 years

7
Q

At what stage is adulthood?

A

18 years +

8
Q

How can researching infancy be a challenge?

A
  • They can’t talk
  • They understand little or no language
  • They’re often not capable of producing complex or organised behaviour
  • They often can’t even move around
  • They can get grumpy pretty quickly
9
Q

What methods do infants possess that we can take advantage of?

A
  • Looking
  • Grasping
  • Sucking
  • Crawling and eventually walking
10
Q

Outline sucking as a method of observing infants

A

Given a dummy to suck and a baseline sucking rate is established, then show infants a stimulus

  • Sucking more = excited
  • No change in sucking rate = not noticed anything different
11
Q

Outline looking as a method of observing infants

A

Shown a picture until they habituate, then shown an old and new picture
Measure how much they look at the new picture

12
Q

What can the proportion of time looking at the new picture tell us?

A

Can they tell that two things are different?
Can they remember the first picture?
What information have they encoded from the picture
This is know as the visual paired comparison task (VPC)

13
Q

How do we check new borns are ok enough to take part in studies?

A
Using the APGAR scale
Appearance
Pulse
Grimace
Activity
Respiration
Scores of 8 or above are seen as being ok
14
Q

What is vision like in new borns?

A

Stuff looks fuzzy, can see light, shapes and movement. Not yet capable of fixation

15
Q

What is vision like at 1-2 months?

A

Can fixate objects, can distinguish high contrast colours (black/white)

16
Q

What is vision like at 4 months?

A

Depth perception and improved colour vision now apparent, can follow objects with eyes

17
Q

What is vision like at 8 months?

A

Visual range increases, can recognise people across a room

18
Q

What is vision like at age 1?

A

Vision similar to adult levels

19
Q

Outline Fantz’s study of face like stimuli

A

Showed a series of stimuli to young infants
From the first month infants showed a small but consistent preference for the face-like configuration
The same pattern is seen when presenting moving images to new borns, they follow face-like stimuli for longer

20
Q

Do infants still recognise their mothers face when olfactory cues are removed?

A

Yes they do and when inadvertent visual cues are controlled for
This is noteworthy as infant’s visual acuity is relatively poor

21
Q

What is perceptual narrowing?

A

Infant’s visual perception becomes increasingly tailored to regular features of the child’s environment
Very general abilities are more finely tuned following experience
Particularly seen with facial recognition
Face processing abilities are shaped by experience

22
Q

Outline the ‘other race’ effect

A

Infants can discriminate pretty well between faces they see, they gradually become extremely good at distinguishing between the kinds of faces they see around them
While gradually losing the ability to discriminate between faces they don’t see often

23
Q

When does the development of hearing happen?

A

Sound can be perceived in the womb prior to birth
From 26 weeks gestation, foetuses show changes in heart rate as a direct response to auditory stimuli
Also able to recognise the sound of their mother’s voice

24
Q

Outline evidence for hearing in the womb

A

New born infants preferred to hear the story read while they were in the womb even when it was a stranger reading it not the mother

25
Q

How does hearing develop with age?

A

It becomes more specialised with age
Infants are initially able to distinguish between phonemes that don’t occur in their native language
This ability narrows to sounds contained in their own language

26
Q

Outline motherese

A

Infants show a preference for motherese rather than adult-like speech
They pay more attention to speech when it has a higher and wider pitch range
It isn’t a completely different way of speaking, its an exaggeration of existing patterns of speech in the language