4: Infant Cognitive and Perceptual Measures

Question 1

List four response measures used with infants.

Answer 1

Searching: Piaget, object permanence and coordination of secondary circular reactions.

Looking/Visual Fixation: limited in young infants by visual system.

Grasping or Reaching, Touching: not before 3 months.

Sucking (HAS): faster and harder when interested, irregular.

Question 2

Preferential looking provides evidence of what two things?

Answer 2

Discriminability, preferences.

Question 3

Discriminability is a prerequisite for _____ but not visa versa.

Answer 3

Preference.

Question 4

What are three things infants prefer to look at? What limits them?

Answer 4

Moderately complex stimuli.

Human faces.

Prefer to look at stripes (compare striped pattern to grey).

Limited by vision.

Question 5

Vision is poor at birth. Why is this?

Answer 5

Acuity about 1/30th adult level, 20/600.

Question 6

Habituation provides evidence of what three things?

Answer 6

Seeing/hearing.

Can control response (e.g., control eye movement).

Recognition memory.

Question 7

Dishabituation provides evidence of what?

Answer 7

Can perceive stimulus as different.

Question 8

The rate of habituation is of interest to researchers. Provide two reasons why.

Answer 8

Fast vs. slow habituators differ significantly years later.

Best infancy predictor of child and adult IQ.

Question 9

What is head turning? Describe its evolution.

Answer 9

Sound localization from birth.

Disappears between 2-3 months, believed to go from reflex (subcortical) to voluntary head control (cortical).

Question 10

Describe the difference in health acceleration vs. deceleration between younger infants and older infants when presented with novel stimuli.

Answer 10

Heart rate accelerates in younger, decelerates in older. In older infants, acceleration = fear, deceleration = interest.

Question 11

Describe the six steps in the history of developmental methods.

Answer 11

Baby biographies (1800 - 1900s): e.g., Darwin.

Systematic observations (Baldwin, 1890s, exiled from field).

Questionnaires (Hall, 1890s).

School testing/assessments (IQ tests, Binet & Simon, 1905).

Study of “defective” children (Freud/Vygotsky, 1920s 1930s).

“Clinical” methods (experimental manipulations): Piaget w/ infants’ motor behaviour (1930s onward), Fantz w/ infants’ looking behaviour (1960s onward).

Question 12

List four reflexes used in measurement.

Answer 12

Stepping, sound localization, sucking, looming (can perceive depth).

Question 13

How does smiling evolve in infants?

Answer 13

Social at 6 months, mirror-recognition w/ peers.

Question 14

List three paradigms in which crying is used as a dependent variable.

Answer 14

“Hold hands” paradigm.

Strange situation and attachment.

Still face paradigm.

Question 15

Moms’ texting affects what paradigm?

Answer 15

Still face.

Question 16

Describe the categorization of male and female faces. What is the preference for infants?

Answer 16

By 3 months, can tell male and female faces apart.

80% prefer females, 20% males, but important to account for primary caregiver.

Question 17

The decline in the first phase of habituation is what?

Answer 17

Known as “getting bored” and suggests evidence of recognition memory.

Question 18

In operant conditioning, the response must occur _____.

Answer 18

Naturally.

Question 19

Describe the two phases of operant conditioning.

Answer 19

Learning phase: measure baseline rate. Present stimulus, wait for response, reward it. Continue and response should increase.

Test phase: have stimulus without reward to see if response higher than baseline. Increased frequency in presence of stimulus indicates learning (after a delay, implies recognition memory).

Question 20

Memory is very _____-specific in young.

Answer 20

Context.

Question 21

Imitation is thought to be a window into infants’ _____ processes.

Answer 21

Cognitive.

Question 22

Piaget thought imitation appeared at what age?

Answer 22

8 months.

Question 23

What are the three abilities required in “genuine” imitation?

Answer 23

Discriminate visually behaviour of actor.

Store representation of actor’s movements.

Formulate behavioural response (without seeing self), match it to stored representation of visual information.

Question 24

Evidence of genuine imitation implies _____ representations, not _____ representations.

Answer 24

Cognitive; perceptual.

Question 25

Meltzoff & Moore suggested that neonates (less than a month old) imitate a variety of behaviours. What were they?

Answer 25

Tongue protrusion, lip protrusion, mouth opening, sequential-finger-movement.

Question 26

Recent research suggests what about imitation?

Answer 26

Confirms only tongue protrusion in infants, suggests innate releasing mechanism. Same response to pen, which may be perceived as a “nipple.”

Question 27

Describe deferred imitation. What does it imply?

Answer 27

Imitation of 2-step action after a delay. Implies everything about imitation + plus recall (the ability to re-represent information unaided).

Question 28

_____ is implicated in deferred imitation because multiple steps cannot be done via _____ alone.

Answer 28

Recall; recognition.

Question 29

What information must be recalled in deferred imitation?

Answer 29

Temporal order information.

Question 30

What is the visual cliff and what does it suggest? What does no preference indicate?

Answer 30

Developed to assess depth perception in infants, other species.

Crawling infants and most other species have depth perception based on preference for shallow side.

Does not imply lack of depth perception, but rather lack of fear or perception.

Question 31

What are three response measures for the visual cliff?

Answer 31

Crawling, crying, heart beat accelaration/deceleration.

Question 32

The development of depth perception in infants is closely tied to what?

Answer 32

Crawling abilities.

Question 33

At 12 mos., what percentage of infants consistently use their mother & father’s emotional expression to decide how to act in ambiguous situations?

Answer 33

80%

Question 34

When infants use other’s emotional expressions to guide behaviour in ambiguous visual cliffs, this is known as what?

Answer 34

Social referencing.

Question 35

In social referencing, fear provides _____, anger suggests _____, and sadness is negative but not _____.

Answer 35

Warning; prohibition; informative.

Question 36

How do children with Down’s syndrome and autism utilize social referencing?

Answer 36

Children with Down’s syndrome may use mother’s expression, but not children with autism.