Chapter 5

Question 1

What is nativism?

Answer 1

The view that perceptual abilities are inborn.

Question 2

What is empiricism?

Answer 2

The view that perceptual abilities are learned.

Question 3

Where has the study of perceptual development been a key battleground?

Answer 3

In the debate of nature vs. nurture.

Question 4

What are the three approaches to

studying infants’ perceptual skills?

Answer 4

PT 1. With the preference technique, the baby is simply shown two pictures or two objects, and the researcher keeps track of how long the baby looks at each one.
HD 2. Habituation and dishabituation. Researchers first present a baby with a particular sight or sound
over and over until he habituates. Then experimenters present another sight or sound or object that is slightly different and watch to see if the baby shows renewed interest (dishabituation). If the baby does show renewed interest, they know he perceives the slightly changed sight or sound
as “different” in some way from the original.
OC 3. The third option is to use the principles of operant conditioning. An infant might be trained to turn her head when she hears a particular sound. After the learned response is well established, the experimenter can vary the sound in some systematic way to see whether
the baby still turns her head.

Question 5

What are the arguments for nativism as an explanation for perceptual development?

Answer 5

Eyes, ears, fingers, tongues, mothers, changes

Researchers have found more and more skills already present in newborns or very young infants. Newborns have good hearing, poor but adequate eyesight, and excellent touch and taste perception. Some color vision. Rudimentary ability to locate the source of sounds around them. From the earliest days of life, can identify their mothers by sight, smell, or sound. These perceptions seem to change with age as the nervous system is undergoing rapid maturation during the early months of life.These changes seem to occur in bursts.

Question 6

What are the arguments for empiricism as an explanation for perceptual development?

Answer 6

Maintenance, attunement

Evidence shows that some minimum level of experience is necessary to support the development of the perceptual systems (Aslin - maintenance). Animals deprived of
light show deterioration of the whole visual system and a consequent decrease in perceptual abilities. Animals deprived of auditory stimuli display
delayed or no development of auditory perceptual skills. Infants lacking sufficient perceptual stimulation may develop more slowly (Wayne Dennis’s study of orphanage babies in Iran).

Attunement may also occur. Animals that are completely deprived of visual experiences in the early months of life never develop the same degree of depth perception as do those with full visual experience. The ability to integrate information from different senses also depends on early experience (have a good idea about what a particular fabric feels like just by looking at it).

Question 7

What is the best understanding of perceptual development?

Answer 7

An interaction between inborn and experiential factors.

Both sides are correct. Both nature and nurture.

Question 8

True or False. Newborns and young infants have far less sensory capacity than physicians or psychologists thought even as recently as a few decades ago.

Answer 8

False. They have more.

Question 9

How do infants’ visual skills change across the first months of life?

Answer 9

Color vision is present at birth, but visual acuity and tracking ability are relatively poor at birth. These skills develop rapidly during the first few months.

Question 10

What is visual acuity?

Answer 10

How well one can see.

Question 11

What does it mean if you have 20/20 vision?

Answer 11

You can see and identify something that is 20 feet away that the average person can also see at 20 feet.

Question 12

What is the typical range of an infant’s visual acuity?

Answer 12

20/200 - 20/400

Question 13

What causes the rapid improving of visual acuity in the first year of life?

Answer 13

Swift changes occurfing in the brain. Myelination, dendritic development, and pruning.

Question 14

When does an infant typically reach 20/20 vision?

Answer 14

6 months

Question 15

What is tracking?

Answer 15

Following a moving object with the eyes.

Question 16

How does an infants tracking ability typically develop?

Answer 16

Tracking is initially fairly inefficient but improves quite rapidly. Infants younger than 2 months show some tracking for brief periods if the target is moving very slowly, but a shift occurs somewhere around 6 to 10 weeks, and babies’ tracking becomes skillful rather quickly.

Question 17

True or False. Researchers have established that the types of cells in the eye necessary for perceiving red and green (the cones) are clearly present by 1 month, perhaps
at birth.

Answer 17

True

Question 18

True or False. Babies cannot hear until they are born.

Answer 18

False. They can hear before they are born.

Question 19

auditory acuity

Answer 19

How well one can hear.

Question 20

True or False. A newborn’s auditory acuity is better then their visual acuity.

Answer 20

True

Question 21

True or False. At birth, a child cannot determine the location of a sound.

Answer 21

False. Though this ability is refined with development.

Question 22

True or False. The cells necessary for smell are present even before the embryonic phase is complete.

Answer 22

True

Question 23

What are the five basic tastes?

Answer 23

Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami

Question 24

True or False. The infant’s senses of touch and motion may be the least developed of all.

Answer 24

False. The most developed

Question 25

binocular cues

Answer 25

involves both eyes

each receives slightly different visual image of the object

the closer the object is the more different the image

Question 26

monocular cues

Answer 26

pictorial information

requires input from only one eye

Question 27

interposition

Answer 27

one object is partially in front of another

Question 28

linear perspective

Answer 28

visual effect that makes railroad tracks seem closer together at a distance

Question 29

kinetic cues

Answer 29

cues from your own motion or the motion of some ebject

Question 30

visual cliff

Answer 30

experiment for determining infants ability to judge depth

infants would not crawl out onto cliff

Question 31

stereopsis

Answer 31

development of depth perception

Question 32

binocular fusion

Answer 32

ability to fuse the images received from both eyes into a single image

develops over the first 10 years of life

Question 33

what do babies look at

Answer 33

edges

motion

2-3 months shift from where an object is to what an object is (identification)

Question 34

True or False. Babies seems to be drawn to attractive faces.

Answer 34

True

Question 35

intermodal perception

Answer 35

Formation of a single perception of a stimulus that is based on information from two or more senses.

an ability present early but refined with experience

Question 36

perceptual constancies

Answer 36

A collection of mental rules that allow humans to perceive shape, size, and color as constant even when perceptual conditions (such as amount of light, angle of view, and the like) change.

Question 37

size constancy

Answer 37

The ability to see an object’s size as remaining the same despite changes in size of the retinal image; a key element in size constancy is the ability to judge depth.

Question 38

shape constancy

Answer 38

The ability to see an object’s shape as remaining the same despite changes in the shape of the retinal image; a basic perceptual constancy.

Question 39

color constancy

Answer 39

The ability to see the color of an object as remaining the same despite changes in illumination or shadow.

Question 40

object constancy

Answer 40

The general phrase describing the ability to see objects as remaining the same despite changes in sensory information about them.

Question 41

object perception

Answer 41

learning to treat some stimuli as objects but not others

Question 42

object permanence

Answer 42

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be directly viewed.

Question 43

social referencing

Answer 43

Using another person’s emotional reaction to some situation as a basis for deciding one’s own reaction. A baby does this when she checks her parent’s facial expression or body language before responding positively or negatively to something new.