7. Sensory Development

Question 1

What are difficulties with infant research?

Answer 1

• short attention span
• can’t control emotions/stay awake for long
• children are unpredictable
• behavior may be random
• can’t talk/understand language

Question 2

What behaviours can we use to measure infants?

Answer 2

• sucking
• looking (eye tracking)
• measure heartbeat
• later they can crawl and eventually walk

Question 3

How is sucking used to measure infants?

Answer 3

• given a dummy and baseline sucking rate is established
• show a stimulus and see if the sucking rate changes
• sucking is inferred to mean more excited

Question 4

How is looking used to measure infants?
What does this tell us?

Answer 4

• shown a picture till they’re bored of it
• then shown two pictures at once, measured how much they look at the new picture

tells us:
- can they tell the two things are different?
- can they remember the first picture?

Question 5

What is the visual comparison task?

Answer 5

• tests if infants can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli
• relies on habituation

Question 6

What is habituation?

Answer 6

• a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations

Question 7

How long does it take infants to get to an adult level of vision?

Answer 7

12 months

Question 8

When do the neural parts of the visual system develop?

Answer 8

• during gestation
• not until birth that they can perceive visual stimuli

Question 9

What is vision in newborn infants like?

Answer 9

• things look dim and fuzzy
• infants can see light, shapes and movement
• not yet capable of fixation
• range vision of about 30cm

Question 10

How does vision develop after newborn infancy?

Answer 10

1-2 months:
- can fixate on objects
- can distinguish high-contrast colours but not more subtle differences

4 months:
- depth perception improves
- colour vision improves
- can follow objects

8 months:
- range of effective vision increases
- can now recognise people across a room

1 year:
- visual skills are broadly similar to adults

Question 11

How do infants react to face like stimuli?

Answer 11

• from birth show a preferential interest for face like stimuli
• can recognise individual faces if within 30cm

Question 12

What is perceptual narrowing?

Answer 12

• with experience infants visual perception gets increasingly attuned to regular features of the childs env
• general abilities are more finely tuned

Question 13

What is the ‘other race’ effect?

Answer 13

• tendency to more easily recognise faces of the race one is most familiar with
• this is gradually lost

Question 14

How is sound in infants prior to birth?
How is this measured?

Answer 14

• can be perceived in the womb
• heart rate changes, seen as a direct response to auditory stimuli

Question 15

What type of hearing language to infants show preference for?

Answer 15

• infant directed (exaggerated pitch, range and speed)
• pay more attention