Chapter 1: Intro and Visual Development

Question 1

What are reasons to learn about child development?

Answer 1

-Raising children
-Choosing social policies
-Understanding human Nature

Question 2

With studying child development, how can we answer the question: How to react to a child’s anger?

Answer 2

-25% of Canadians spank their children
-Research shows more effective alternatives:
Showing sympathy
Time-outs
Finding positive alternatives to express anger

Question 3

How do children shape their own environment?

Answer 3

Children contribute to there own development and this contribution gets bigger as they get older

Question 4

In what ways is development continuous and in what ways is it discontinuous?

Answer 4

-Example: tree grows continuously, butterfly grow discontinuously
-Historically, discontinuity theories have been very influential
-More recently, research concludes that development is more gradual.
-Matter of perspective and of the variable studied.

Question 5

How does the sociocultural context influence development?

Answer 5

Influences every aspect of children’s development, and the biggest influence is the people that the children interact with.

Question 6

How do children become so different from one another?

Answer 6

-Genetic differences
-Differences in treatment by parent and other adults
-Differences in reactions to similar experiences
-Different choices of environments

Question 7

Why focus on infancy?

Answer 7

-Rapid changes in first 2 years
-Changes in one area enables changes in other areas
-Methods for studying infants different because they can’t communicate clearly
-Sheds light on nature/nurture debate

Question 8

What was assumed about babies vision a few decades ago and why is this wrong?

Answer 8

-Assumed that infants vision was almost non-existent
-Wrong because babies scan the environment and pause to look at things

Question 9

Preferential looking paradigm is a method for studying babies sight. How does it work?

Answer 9

-Takes advantage of babies preference to look at some “interesting” things
-Present the baby with 2 stimuli at the same time
-If baby looks longer at one of the two, means that:
1. they can distinguish between the two
2. they have a preference for one over the other
-Assesses infants natural preference for stimuli

Question 10

What are the limitations of the preferential looking paradigm?

Answer 10

-Involves parent coming with the child and scientist observes.
-Babies can’t point until they’re a few months old so need an eye tracker

Question 11

The habituation paradigm is a method for studying babies sight. How does it work?

Answer 11

-Takes advantage of babies natural preference for novelty
-Habituation phase and test

Question 12

Describe in more detail the two phases of the habituation paradigm.

Answer 12

-Habituation phase: repeatedly present infant with a stimulus until they habituate to it.
-Test: Present habituated old stimulus along with a new stimulus.
-If baby changes reaction to new stimulus, it can tell the difference between the two.(Most often what happens)
-Assesses infants ability to discriminate between stimuli

Question 13

How is visual acuity assessed in babies?

Answer 13

-Assessed by presenting a succession of paddles with increasingly narrower stripes and narrower gaps between them until infant can no longer distinguish between stripped paddle and plain gray one.

Question 14

How is babies visual acuity at birth?

Answer 14

-Poor visual acuity
-Prefer to look at patterns with high visual contrast
-Don’t discriminate between stimuli with lower contrast sensitivities

Question 15

Why do infants have poor visual acuity at birth?

Answer 15

-Immaturity of cone cells in infant’s retina (light sensitive neurons involved in seeing fine details and colours)

Question 16

At what age do babies get adult-like visual acuity?

Answer 16

8 months

Question 17

How do infants see at 1, 2, 5 months?

Answer 17

-1 month: infants see in black and white
-2 month: colour vision appears
-5 months: perceive colour categories similar to adults

Question 18

Do infants categorise colour the same way adults do?

Answer 18

-5 months old brain responded to change in colour to a different category but not to a change in colour in the same category
-respond to change between green and purple but not to change between two shades of purple

Question 19

How is infants’ visual scanning at birth?

Answer 19

Infants scan their visual environment and pause to look at something, but trouble tracking moving stimuli because eye movements are jerky

Question 20

How is baby’s visual scanning at 4 months?

Answer 20

Able to smoothly track moving objects if moving slowly

Question 21

How is babies visual scanning at 8 months?

Answer 21

-Adult-like visual scanning; can smoothly follow objects
-Due to brain maturation

Question 22

Why is visual scanning important?

Answer 22

Important because one of the few ways that infants have control over what they observe and learn

Question 23

What are newborns preferences face perception wise?

Answer 23

-Newborns show a preference for faces or face-like stimuli vs. non-face like stimuli
-Preferences for right-side up faces vs inverted faces

Question 24

Why are infants drawn to faces?

Answer 24

-Special face perception mechanism? There must be a biological reason for this.

Question 25

What part of the brain is responsible for face recognition?

Answer 25

Fusiform face area

Question 26

What is a hypothesis on why babies are drawn to faces?

Answer 26

-Infants have a general bias for stimuli that are more “top heavy” vs. “bottom heavy”

Question 27

We are doing a preferential looking paradigm and have 4 types of faces: regular, upside-down, scrambled top-heavy, scrambled bottom heavy. What faces should the baby prefer according the top-heavy hypothesis?

Answer 27

-regular face and scrambled top-heavy face

Question 28

What are the 3 steps to testing the top-heavy hypothesis ?

Answer 28

-1st test: do babies prefer upright face or upside-down face
-2nd test: do babies prefer top heavy scrambled face or bottom heavy scrambled face
-3rd test: upright face vs top-heavy configuration

Question 29

How quickly do infants learn how to recognize their mothers face?

Answer 29

-Very quickly
-Alot of time spent with mom while breastfeeding
-Just a few days after birth, babies prefer their mother’s face compared to another woman’s face

Question 30

What are face specialists and face generalists?

Answer 30

-specialist: can distinguish between two faces but struggle to distinguish between two monkey faces. Better at distinguishing between faces that are frequently experienced in their environment.
-generalist: equally good at distinguishing between human faces and monkey faces

Question 31

Are 6 months old face specialists or face generalists?

Answer 31

Generalist

Question 32

When do babies become face specialists?

Answer 32

-During the course of the 1st year of life
-6 months are still face generalists but 9 months old are already specialist, as well as adults.

Question 33

What is perceptual narrowing?

Answer 33

-Tuning of perceptual mechanisms to the specific sensory inputs that infants encounter in their daily life
-Present for several perceptual domains

Question 34

What improves and declines when babies start doing perceptual narrowing?

Answer 34

-improves perception of stimuli encountered often
-Decline in the ability to distinguish stimuli that are not present often in infant’s environment

Question 35

What is perceptual narrowing a result of biologically?

Answer 35

-synaptic pruning: the brain eliminates extra synapses

Question 36

What is the evidence showing that there is perceptual narrowing in face perception ?

Answer 36

-Infants become face specialists
-Infants demonstrate other-race-effect

Question 37

What is the other-race-effect?

Answer 37

People find it easier to distinguish between faces of individuals from their own racial group than between faces from other racial groups

Question 38

How was other-race-effect tested in infants?

Answer 38

-Recruited Caucasian infants
-Habituated infants to: Faces from their own race OR faces from another race.
-Then presented habituated face with a new face from the same race
-If habituated to non-Caucasian face and doesn’t make different interest with new face

Question 39

What were the result of the other-race-effect test in infants? for 3 months old and 9 months old

Answer 39

-3 months old: distinguish between faces of all races
-9 months old: can only distinguish between faces of own race

Question 40

Is other-race-effect innate, or is it an exposure effect?

Answer 40

-exposure
-During first few months of life, 96% of faces that babies are exposed to are females from their own race.
-Is infant is equally exposed to faces of different races, it will not show ORE.