W4 - Lecture

Question 1

What did Robert Fantz (1961) discover about infant visual preferences?

Answer 1

Infants as young as a week old prefer: Bull’s-eye patterns over striped patterns, Checkerboard patterns over plain squares, Schematic faces over any other stimulus.

Question 2

Why was Fantz (1961) important for visual perception research?

Answer 2

It provided the first evidence that infants can distinguish visual forms early in life.

Question 3

Why is infant looking behavior important in perception research?

Answer 3

Since Fantz (1961), it has been the most powerful method for studying visual perception.

Question 4

What are the main techniques used in looking time research?

Answer 4

Visual preferences (Fantz, 1961), Preferential tracking (Johnson et al., 1991), Visual habituation (Fantz, 1966), Fixed-trial familiarization (Slater, 1983), Violation of expectation paradigm (Baillargeon et al., 1985).

Question 5

What did Slater, Morison & Rose (1983) find about shape discrimination in newborns?

Answer 5

Newborns can discriminate shapes, but how they do this is unclear. They habituate to a shape and show preference for a novel shape.

Question 6

What did Cohen & Younger (1983) find about form discrimination?

Answer 6

Infant form discrimination changes within the first months: 1.5-month-olds focus on orientation, 3.5-month-olds focus on configural relationships.

Question 7

What did Yang et al. (2014) find about light field and surface reflectance perception?

Answer 7

3–4-month-olds detect changes in light field but NOT surface reflectance. 7–8-month-olds detect changes in surface reflectance but NOT light field.

Question 8

What did Alan Slater (1991, 1990, 1985) find about newborn perception?

Answer 8

Newborns exhibit size and shape constancy within days of birth.

Question 9

What did Baillargeon, Spelke & Wasserman (1985) find about object permanence?

Answer 9

3.5-month-olds look longer at impossible events, showing early knowledge of object permanence.

Question 10

What did Spelke (1998) find about object unity?

Answer 10

4-month-olds perceive occluded rods as part of the same object, indicating object unity perception.

Question 11

What did Piaget (1954) say about object permanence in infants?

Answer 11

Stage III infants (6 months) neglect hidden objects, suggesting that object permanence develops gradually.

Question 12

What is the Core Knowledge Hypothesis (Spelke, 1992)?

Answer 12

Infants have innate object representations and understand object motion and solidity by 2.5 months.

Question 13

What did Hood (1998, 2000) find about object permanence in search tasks?

Answer 13

Even 2-year-olds struggle with manual search tasks, sometimes searching in impossible locations.

Question 14

What does the looking vs. acting debate suggest about infant cognition?

Answer 14

Infants may have visual awareness of object consistency but not true object permanence.

Question 15

What is the ontogeny of multisensory perception?

Answer 15

It refers to how we develop the ability to use multiple senses together, a major challenge for infants.

Question 16

What are the challenges of multisensory integration in newborns: Crossmodal Binding Problem?

Answer 16

Different senses have different latencies, spatial formats, and speeds. The brain must coordinate these inputs for unified perception.

Question 17

What did studies on infant dummy sucking reveal about multisensory coordination?

Answer 17

Infants looked longer at the dummy they were sucking, suggesting early multisensory coordination.

Question 18

What is the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000, 2002, 2012)?

Answer 18

Infants are sensitive to amodal properties (e.g., tempo, rhythm, intensity) that are redundant across senses.

Question 19

What evidence supports the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis?

Answer 19

Bahrick & Lickliter (2000) – Infants detected rhythm changes better when the pattern was presented both visually and auditorily.

Question 20

What evidence does not support the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis?

Answer 20

Slater (1999) found that infants also learn arbitrary correspondences early, challenging the idea that amodal properties are the first to be learned.

Question 21

What was Molyneux’s Question (Locke, 1690)?

Answer 21

Do we start with completely separate senses that must be linked through experience?

Question 22

How did Held et al. (2011) answer Molyneux’s Question?

Answer 22

Newly sighted blind individuals struggled to match touch with vision initially, suggesting sensory integration is learned over time.

Question 23

What did Gori et al. (2021) find about sensory integration in severely visually impaired (SVI) infants?

Answer 23

Normal auditory localization, Enhanced tactile localization, and Stronger audiotactile integration.

Question 24

How does visual experience impact multisensory perception?

Answer 24

Sighted infants are better at integrating tactile and auditory information. Blind infants rely more on audiotactile integration.

Question 25

What did Johnson et al. (1991) discover about newborn face perception?

Answer 25

Newborns track faces within 30 minutes of birth, helping them learn about people immediately.

Question 26

What did Farroni et al. (2002) find about eye contact?

Answer 26

Newborns prefer direct eye contact, helping them attend to social situations and communication.

Question 27

What did Reid et al. (2017) discover about fetal face perception?

Answer 27

4D ultrasound shows fetuses track face-like stimuli in the womb.

Question 28

What did Ronga et al. (2025) find about fetal eye movements?

Answer 28

From 26 weeks gestation, fetuses show a preference for face-like configurations.

Question 29

What technique is used to study newborn speech perception?

Answer 29

Non-nutritive sucking technique – Infants suck more when they perceive something familiar or pleasant.

Question 30

What did DeCasper & Fifer (1980) discover about newborns’ voice preferences?

Answer 30

Newborns (3 days old) prefer their mother’s voice over unfamiliar voices.

Question 31

What did DeCasper & Spence (1986) find about prenatal learning?

Answer 31

Newborns recognize and prefer stories that were read to them before birth.

Question 32

What did Hepper (1988) find about fetal auditory learning?

Answer 32

Fetuses suck more in response to their mother’s favorite TV show ("fetal soap addiction").

Question 33

When do smell and taste develop in utero?

Answer 33

Between 4–8 weeks gestation.

Question 34

What did Schaal et al. (1998) find about newborn olfactory preferences?

Answer 34

Newborns prefer the smell of maternal amniotic fluid and milk.

Question 35

What did Marlier & Schaal (1997, 1998) suggest about early olfactory learning?

Answer 35

Early olfactory learning helps infants identify caregivers.

Question 36

What is the Transnatal Chemosensory Continuity Hypothesis (Schaal, 2015)?

Answer 36

The uterine environment shapes postnatal sensory preferences.

Question 37

What did Mennella et al. (2001) find about prenatal flavor exposure?

Answer 37

Newborns prefer flavors they were exposed to in utero.

Question 38

How did Steiner et al. measure infant taste responses?

Answer 38

By observing mouth expressions to sweet vs. bitter flavors.

Question 39

What did Schaal et al. (1998) find about prenatal olfactory learning?

Answer 39

Newborns preferred anise only if their mother consumed it during pregnancy.

Question 40

How did Mennella et al. (2001) show the impact of prenatal flavor exposure?

Answer 40

Infants weaned on carrot-flavored cereal preferred it if their mother drank carrot juice during pregnancy.

Question 41

What did Ustun et al. (2022) discover about fetal taste responses?

Answer 41

Fetuses display different facial reactions to flavors in utero.

Question 42

What is the preferential head-turn procedure?

Answer 42

A method to study phoneme discrimination in infants by training them to expect a visual reward when speech sounds change.

Question 43

At what age can infants distinguish many phonemes?

Answer 43

As young as 1–2 months (Eimas et al., 1971).

Question 44

What did Werker & Tees (1984) find about phoneme discrimination?

Answer 44

6-month-olds can discriminate phonemes across languages, but 12-month-olds lose this ability unless exposed to the language.

Question 45

What did Kuhl et al. (2003) find about face-to-face interactions and phoneme retention?

Answer 45

Face-to-face interactions help retain non-native phoneme discrimination, but TV exposure does not.

Question 46

What did Pascalis et al. (2002) find about face discrimination in infants?

Answer 46

6-month-olds can discriminate both human and monkey faces, but 9-month-olds only discriminate human faces.

Question 47

What is multisensory perceptual narrowing?

Answer 47

Young infants match monkey calls to faces, but older infants lose this ability.

Question 48

What did ERP & fMRI studies show about face recognition development?

Answer 48

Face recognition becomes specialized over time, with the SC tracking faces early and the FFA later mediating face preference.

Question 49

At what age do infants show a preference for faces?

Answer 49

Face tracking is present postnatally, but face preference develops around 2 months.

Question 50

What are the two brain systems involved in face perception?

Answer 50

1. Subcortical face system (SC/Pulvinar; ConSpec). 2. Cortical face system (FFA; ConLearn).

Question 51

What is the key finding of Lloyd-Fox et al. (2013) regarding motor skills and the social brain?

Answer 51

Greater blood flow in the pSTS/TPJ correlates with fine motor skill development and responses to social gestures.

Question 52

How does Johnson explain the development of face recognition?

Answer 52

An innate face-orienting mechanism (superior colliculus) interacts with experience, leading to cortical specialization for face recognition.

Question 53

Besides vision, what other sensory cue is important for early social development?

Answer 53

Olfaction (smell), due to early exposure in utero.