20 - SENSORY PERCEPTION

Question 1

What are the five senses?

Answer 1

Vision, audition, olfaction, taste, and touch

Question 2

What does Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection suggest?

Answer 2

Changes to an organism’s phenotype can lead to changes in a population’s heritable traits over time

Question 3

Why did stereoscopic vision develop?

Answer 3

Ancestors who lived in trees, needed to judge distances for jumping

Question 4

Why did trichromatic colour vision develop?

Answer 4

The need to distinguish between foods

Question 5

What type of lifestyle did our sensory systems develop for?

Answer 5

Hunter-gatherer

Question 6

What epoch did the parent-infant bond develop from?

Answer 6

Pleistocene epoch (~1.6m-10,000 years ago) where the infant was protected by the parents at all times, never left alone, and fed on demand

Question 7

Between Aristotle and Plato, who favoured the nature vs nurture side of the debate?

Answer 7

Plato was nature whilst Aristotle was nurture

Question 8

What is phylogeny?

Answer 8

The evolutionary origins of a species

Question 9

What is ontogeny?

Answer 9

The developmental lifespan of a single organism

Question 10

How do we measure infant capabilities?

Answer 10

Mainly by habituation/dishabituation and preferences

Question 11

What did Fantz (1960’s) find about viewing preferences in neonates?

Answer 11

Neonates looked towards face,s then complex patterns, followed by plain stimuli

Question 12

When is auditory function present in the womb?

Answer 12

19 weeks post-conception

Question 13

What occurs in early postnatal auditory development?

Answer 13

Airborne soundwaves become accessible to the newborn and the newborn can respond to higher-frequency sounds

Question 14

What reflexes is a neonate born with?

Answer 14

Blinking, babinski, grabbing, rooting, and sucking

Question 15

When and why do most reflexes disappear?

Answer 15

6 months of age. Because behaviour becomes controlled voluntarily due to the development of the cerebral cortex

Question 16

Why is it important to test reflexes in infancy?

Answer 16

Absent reflexes can inform about CNS function and persistence of reflexes can indicate damage to the cerebral cortex

Question 17

What are the average ages for motor control?

Answer 17

Head - 6 weeks
Lift by arms to prone - 2 months
Sit alone and crawl - 7 months
Pull to stand - 7 months
Walk alone - 11-12 months