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PSYC 304 > visual development > Flashcards

visual development Flashcards

1
Q

what is visual acuity?

A

sharpness of visual discrimination

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2
Q

how is visual acuity assessed in infants?

A
  • preferential looking paradigm
  • study using grey paddle + succession of paddles with increasingly narrow stripes and narrower gaps between the stripes until infants can no longer distinguish between striped paddle and solid grey one
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3
Q

what is the timeline for visual acuity in infants?

A
  • at birth: poor visual acuity due to immature cone cells
  • 8 months: babies achieve adult-like visual acuity
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4
Q

what is the timeline for colour perception?

A
  • birth: infants see in grey scale
  • 2 months: colour vision appears; can see red first
  • 5 months: adult-like colour perception due to maturity of cones and visual cortex; can discriminate between colour categories and between hues of the same colour
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5
Q

how is colour perception tested in infants?

A
  • habituation paradigm
  • after being familiarized with one colour or hue, do they look longer at the novel colour/hue?
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6
Q

what is the timeline for visual scanning in infants?

A
  • birth: infants scan their visual environment and pause to look at things, but eye movement is jerky so it’s hard to track moving stimuli
  • 4 months: able to smoothly track moving objects if moving slowly
  • 8 months: adult-like visual scanning due to brain maturation
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7
Q

what are the two hypotheses about why infants prefer to look at faces?

A
  1. fusiform face area: located in the temporal lobe next to the lateral occipital complex; specialized to perceive faces
  2. infants prefer top-heavy stimuli (tested using preferential looking paradigm)
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8
Q

how long does it take for an infant to prefer their mother’s face over the faces of other women?

A

just a few days after birth

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9
Q

what does it mean when we say that infants become “face specialists”? how long does this process take? why does it occur?

A
  • over the first year of their life, infants become better at distinguishing between faces that are frequently experienced in their environment
  • 9 months onward: can distinguish between 2 human faces but struggle to distinguish between 2 monkey faces (specialist)
  • 6 months: equally good at distinguishing between human and monkey faces (generalist)
  • result of perceptual narrowing to improve the ability to perceive stimuli that are encountered often, resulting from synaptic pruning
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10
Q

what is synaptogenesis? what is its opposite?

A
  • synaptogenesis: formation of synapses between neurons; rapid right after birth, results in hyperconnectivity in the brain
  • opposite of synaptic pruning: elimination of synapses to increase the efficiency of neural communication (results in perceptual narrowing)
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11
Q

what is the “other race effect”? why does it occur? what is its timeline in infants?

A
  • people find it easier to distinguish between faces of individuals from their own racial group than between faces from other racial groups
  • 3 month olds don’t demonstrate this effect, since they are face generalists
  • 9 month olds do demonstrate it, since they are face specialists
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12
Q

how does ASD affect face perception?

A

toddlers with ASD often have difficulty with face perception, as they prefer to look at geometric shapes over pictures of people

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13
Q

what is perceptual constancy?

A
  • the perception of objects as being constant in size, shape, colour, etc despite physical differences in the retinal image of the objects
  • unconscious automatic process
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14
Q

when does perceptual constancy occur in infants? how is this tested?

A
  • habituation paradigm tests perceptual constancy by repeatedly showing a small cube from different distances, then introducing a new larger cube further away to see if the infant can discriminate between the two
  • suggests that perceptual constancy is present from birth
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15
Q

what is object segregation?

A
  • the ability to identify that objects are separate from each other
  • movement is an important cue
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16
Q

when does object segregation occur in infants? how is it tested?

A
  • habituation paradigm is used, showing infants a repeated video of a rod moving side to side behind a box, then introduced to one rod vs a broken rod moving side to side
  • 4 month olds preferred looking at the broken rod (novel), indicating that they understood the rod behind the box to be a singular object
  • newborns were not able to discriminate between the two stimuli, indicating that they do not possess object segregation abilities (learned with experience)
17
Q

what is binocular disparity? when is it perceived in infants?

A
  • difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signals being sent to the brain. the visual cortex then combines the differing neural signals to see one complete image
  • important basis for depth perception
  • perceived at 4 months old
18
Q

what is a sensitive period? what is the sensitive period for binocular vision?

A
  • a sensitive period is a time during which experience shapes the development of an ability more than at other times
  • sensitive period for binocular vision is from birth to age 3. if they do not receive normal visual input until age 3 they may have life-long difficulties with depth perception
19
Q

what are monocular depth cues? when are they perceived? how are they tested?

A
  • depth cues perceived with one eye, such as relative size or overlap
  • perceived at 6-7 months
  • tested using visual cliff study: 6 month olds will not crawl over the visual cliff but younger children will
20
Q

summarize the entire visual development timeline

A
  • birth: rudimentary visual scanning, poor acuity, greyscale vision, preference for high contrast and faces, perceptual constancy
  • 2 months: colour vision appears
  • 4 months: object segregation and binocular depth perception
  • 5 months: adult-like colour perception
  • 6 months: face generalists, monocular depth perception appears
  • 8 months: adult like visual scanning and visual acuity
  • 9 months: face specialists through perceptual narrowing
21
Q

what aspects of visual development are innate?

A
  • perceptual constancy
  • preference for top-heavy stimuli
22
Q

what aspects of visual development improve with brain maturation?

A
  • visual acuity
  • colour perception
  • visual scanning
23
Q

what aspects of visual development are improved through experience?

A
  • object segregation
  • face perception
  • depth perception
24
Q

what is intermodal perception?

A
  • the coordinated perception of a singular object/event through two or more sensory systems
  • infants can integrate both visual and auditory and visual and motor information early on in development

PSYC 304 (12 decks)

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