Week Four - Perceptual Development

Question 1

What was John Locke’s view on newborns sensation?

Answer 1

Newborns mind is like a white page where all ideas and abilities are developed through learning and experience

Question 2

What did William James propose about newborns sensation?

Answer 2

That babies cannot distinguish between sensations

Question 3

What is today’s view on infants sensation?

Answer 3

Infants are born with many skills and actively learn many more, rapidly, as they explore

Question 4

What is sensation?

Answer 4

detection and discrimination of sensory information

Question 5

What is perception

Answer 5

Interpretation of those sensations including recognition and identification

Question 6

What is the most important sense?

Answer 6

Vision

- takes up nearly half of the cerebral cortex and improves over first months of life

Question 7

What are some popular testing methods for vision?

Answer 7

Preferential looking task
Habituation
Conditioned head-turn

Question 8

What is preferential looking task assessing?

Answer 8

Whether the infant can discriminate between two similar visual stimuli (looking time is measured)

Question 9

What is habituation?

Answer 9

A gradual decrease in response to interest in a repeated stimulus

Question 10

What is novelty preference?

Answer 10

Human preference for anything new or different

Question 11

Why is habituation useful?

Answer 11

Means we won’t continuously notice things that are there all the time and don’t need our attention

Question 12

What do infants lack at birth?

Answer 12

Visual acuity but improves during first month (nd better when tracking/scanning)

Question 13

What age is visual acuity in infants adult level?

Answer 13

6 months

Question 14

How do we test visual acuitty?

Answer 14

Preferential looking (narrow stripes over plain)

Question 15

Colour vision in infants?

Answer 15

Initially limited but develops quickly as cones mature (2-3 mo = adult categories)

Question 16

As infants get older, what do they prefer?

Answer 16

More complex patterns

Question 17

What does the preference of complex patterns in infants mean?

Answer 17

Means better understanding of structure

Question 18

What do edges and contrasts provide?

Answer 18

Information on the boundary of an object
Depth and how to grasp objects
Greater neural activation
Helps develop neural pathways of pattern recognition

Question 19

Why are infants drawn to faces?

Answer 19

They are 3D, moving, have areas of high/low contrasts, and regulate visual stimulation

May be genetically preprogrammed to prefer faces

Question 20

How does social learning affect preferences for faces?

Answer 20

Infants prefer novel faces of same sex as their own caregiver

also have a preference for faces matching their own race

prefer smiling faces by 3 mo

Question 21

What is object constancy?

Answer 21

Perception/belief that an object remains constant, despite changes in the way it looks

Question 22

Conditioning studies suggest that infants have innate knowledge of?

Answer 22

Shape constancy and size constancy

Question 23

Why are constancies important?

Answer 23

Help maintain a stable perceptual world

Question 24

What is the evidence that object constancy develops relatively early in children?

Answer 24

The conditioned head turn paradigm

Question 25

When does depth perception start?

Answer 25

2-3 months old (learn to focus on objects at different distances) and by age 4 years = adult level

Question 26

Explain the idea behind the visual cliff experiment?

Answer 26

infants should we unwilling to cross if they can truly perceive depth

Question 27

Similarities in infant and adult heart rate?

Answer 27

Adults heart rate decelerates in response to novel/attractive and interesting stimuli Accelerates in response to dangerous/aversive stimuli

Question 28

What 3 ways can we perceive visual depth?

Answer 28

Kinetic cues (1-3 mo) Binocular depth cues (4-6 mo) Pictorial distance cues (5-7 mo)

Question 29

Explain Kinetic cues

Answer 29

Produced as a person/object moves - motion parallax: close = faster, further = slower - interposition: closer objects obscure furter objects

Question 30

What are binocular depth cues?

Answer 30

inter-eye disparity is greater for closer than further objects

Question 31

What are pictorial distance cues?

Answer 31

linear perspective and texture gradient - tested with reaching studies

Question 32

What can we use to test hearing in infants?

Answer 32

Habituation (HR chaning, sucking, breathing)

Question 33

At what age can foetus respond to sounds?

Answer 33

24 weeks in utero

Question 34

How do we know infants can hear at birth?

Answer 34

Respond with startle reflex, fists, crying

Question 35

By 3 days old, infants can?

Answer 35

orient to the direction of sound (prefer complex to pure) distinguish: 2 vs 3 syllables happy vs negative speech tones

Question 36

Which parts of auditory sensation continues to develop until age 10?

Answer 36

Sensitivity and pitch discrimination

Question 37

Differences between adults and infants in sound sensitivity?

Answer 37

Newborns not as sensitive to sound as adults - newborns more sensitive to low pitch

Question 38

What age can infants locate sound?

Answer 38

2 months

Question 39

Smell and taste development in infants?

Answer 39

Well developed in last months in utero - highly developed at birth

Question 40

Food taste preferences changes?

Answer 40

Changes with age - sweeter tastes preferred by foetus - salty tastes preferred by 4 mo

Question 41

How early do foetus respond to touch?

Answer 41

8 weeks

Question 42

Why is sensitivity to touch important for?

Answer 42

For exploring the environment and for positive emotional development

Question 43

What is haptic perception?

Answer 43

Use of touch to explore objects - oral manipulation is most informative - 3 yo = adult like exploration

Question 44

How do infants respond to pain?

Answer 44

with distress (crying, blood elevation) but also influenced by others reactions and the environment

Question 45

How can we assess older children's experience of pain?

Answer 45

Faces pain scale (pointing to one that best represents)

Question 46

Explain the concept of intermodal perception

Answer 46

The ability to combine input from different senses to form a perception of unitary events or objects Infants preferred sucked on dummy despite new visual stimulus of other dummy - suggesting IP is an innate skill that improves with experience