wk4= how perceptual abilities develop in infancy, what causes it

Question 1

plan

Answer 1

1. introduction
2. visual perception in infancy
3. object understanding
   4.multisensory perception + development

Question 2

1a. introduction

Answer 2

Perception definition
The ability to interpret sensory input and organise it to form meaningful experiences — crucial for navigating the physical and social world from birth.
Highlight the theoretical accounts related to perception
Whilst many empiricist like William James in this sector of psych suggest infants learn to perceive the world, born into the world in “buzzing confusion” (James, 1890) . Nativists suggest infants are bestowed innate abilities to make sense of the perceptual world around them .

Question 3

1b. introduction

Answer 3

Thesis
Infants demonstrate early perceptual competencies, but these are shaped and extended through interaction with the environment. This essay will discuss visual, multisensory, and social perception, integrating theory and method throughout.

Question 4

2a. Visual perception in infancy

Answer 4

Newborn abilities
Infants appear to be predisposed to visual preferences at birth. Fantz (1961) showed 1w old infants were able to differentiate between different pieces of stimuli, looking longer at stimuli that resembled a face. First evidence they can distinguish visual forms in early life. However done by looking times.
Eval
We aren’t quite sure what longer looking actually means due to this being Soley a behavioural measure. It can be difficult to disentangle whether infants are responding to visual complexity, salience, or meaningfulness (Aslin, 2007). Behaviour sits at end of neural processing stream, being the output. May be missing info that tells us what they can perceive

Question 5

2a. visual perception in infancy

Answer 5

Development
Cohen (1983) suggested that the way we discriminate forms between one another differ as we develop. Found young babies dishabituation to novel orientation of a shape. Thus, infants processed the orientation of lines of shapes for discrimination. 4months= dishabituate to novel angle-> looking at global shape to discriminate . Adult like . Shows babies below 4m perceive visual shapes differently, developing perceptual refinement . In support Yang et al (2014) found infants reach 7months no longer detect changes in light fields , rather learned to focus on surface reflectance of properties to detect change
Gibsons differentiation theory
This evidence overall aligns with Gibsons differentiation theory, a nativist-leaning interactionist view of perception development. we already have the ability to perceive the real world provided by our senses, but we have to figure out + learn how to differentiate in different circumstances. Overall shows how perceptual abilities may be present, but experience is needed to sharpen it, following an interactionist pov to perception development

Question 6

3a. object understanding

Answer 6

Object permeance
Whilst Gibsons account may align with evidence in visual perception. Are challenging accounts in object understanding. OP= understanding objects continue to exist even out of sight.
Piaget (1954)
Understanding emerges at 8 months, found babies showed neglect of objects once hidden, no longer searching for it= no OP. Suggested infants gradually construct knowledge through repeated sensorimotor interaction= empirical .
Baillargeon (1987)
Vio of expectation infants 3.5m looked longer at impossible events despite familiar , understand solidity . Shows expectations and early knowledge . Challenge Piaget + . Extends to (Spelke et al 1992) where 2.5 months understood solidity. support core knowledge theory (Spelke )

Question 7

3a. object understanding

Answer 7

Spelke core knowledge
Predisposed domain specific neural systems that provide core knowledge about world e.g. solidifty .. Suggests an innate visual understanding of world .
Evidence against
some infants fail manual search tasks for hidden objects despite showing awareness in vio awareness studies .Weaks validity of object perm studies as evidence for early understanding . Maybe fail to retrieve hidden items not because lack of understanding but cannot co coordinate movements to act . Discrepency highlights difficulty in assessing infants for what they know vs what can demonstrate . so unclear is studies true conceptual understanding or sensitivity to perceptual anomalies.
Piaget
Critiqued OP studies saying their visual awareness doesn’t count for OP as vanished object is not yet a perm object which has moved, just renters to void. Nevertheless, consistency of OP findings across studies supports the idea that some form of object knowledge is present in early infancy.

Question 8

4a. multisensory perception + development

Answer 8

Multisensory def
Infants grow= combining info across senses for richer perceptions.
Newborn multisensory capacity
Melzoff and Borton (1979)= 1m able to match tactile-visual stimuli. Suggest early cross modal perception of the world + aligns with the differentiation account . However rep of findings= questionable, underlying mechansism remain unclear

Question 9

4b. multisensory perception + development

Answer 9

Inter sensory redundancy hypothesis
(Bahrick and Lickliter 2000) =infants sensitive to info presented across multiple senses simultaneously if coded in a common rep format. This is amodal information. Babies then learn arbitrary correspondences = distinct info in sep modalities that babies mustc learn between senses
Evidence
Bahrick (1992) found amodal presentations assisted 5m learning about modality specific aspects of stimuli