Chapter 5 Flashcards
Define sensation, perception, and action.
- Sensation - the process by which sensory receptor neurons detect information and transmit it to the brain.
- Perception - the interpretation of sensory input
- Actions - motor activities prompted by sensory and/or perceptual information
Distinguish between the nativist and constructivist positions on perception.
Constructivists (such as Piaget) argue that the newborn must construct an understanding of the world through experience with sensory inputs. Thus, according to the constructivist perspective, nurture is the primary driver of the development of perception.
Nativists believe that each person is born with some innate understanding of how to interpret sensory information. Thus, according to the nativists, the origin of perception is largely nature.
Summarize Gibson’s ecological approach to perception and how it differs from approaches that are primarily constructivist or nativist.
Gibson’s ecological theory proposes that everything we need to understand the world around us is available in the environment through objects themselves. We are able to directly detect the affordances of objects in terms of how we might interact with them in view of our constantly changing position relative to all the objects around us - allowing perception to drive action. Gibson ecologists would say that all the information needed to interpret the current perceptual situation is available in the cur- rent situation. In the ecological view, nature and nurture are integrally related.
Describe the changes in visual capabilities from birth through the first year, and note the visual preferences exhibited by infants.
Right after birth, babies can tell differences between human faces and other objects - even their mother’s face from others (however their action is something they par more attention to than faces). Objects start off blurry due to visual acuity and accommodation. Infants younger than 2 months old discriminate brightness and colors and are attracted to contour, moderate complexity, and movement. Starting at 2 or 3 months, infants more clearly perceive and prefer whole patterns such as faces and common motion and seem to understand a good deal about objects and their properties, guided by intuitive theories of the physical world (ideas that some things are physically impossible to occur). At 6 months to a year, they practically see as well as an adult and gain more sense of the boundaries of stationary objects.
Explain how infants organize visual information to try to “make sense” of their world.
Spatial perception develops rapidly in infants, and by about 7 months, after they begin to crawl, infants not only perceive drop-offs but also avoid, if not fear, them. They also understand size constancy by 4 months of age.
Outline the auditory and other capabilities of the prenatal and early postnatal period, including a description of how researchers evaluate these capabilities.
Young infants can recognize their mother’s voice and distinguish speech sounds that adults cannot discriminate. They also can tell and prefer sounds they heard in the prenatal period even in the postnatal period (babypod). Anything they hear, even their native language, before birth is preffered postnatally - but their full preference with sound becomes more developed/different with the audio input of sound postnatally. The senses of taste and smell are also well developed at birth. Newborns are sensitive and reactive to different tastes, smells, touch, temperature, and pain. With an innate preference for sweets and later preferences formed as early as prenatal development.
Explain the early experiences needed for development of normal perceptual skills and the influence of early experience on the brain.
The early presence of sensory and perceptual abilities suggests that they are innate, but they are also clearly influenced by early experiences. Certain experiences may be necessary for normal visual perception to develop, suggesting a sensitive period for the visual system - as a lack of visual input can lead to blindness in children. Infants actively seek out stimulation by exploring their environments, which typically provides them with the stimulation they need to develop normal sensory and perceptual skills.
Describe 4 procedures used by researchers to assess perceptual abilities of infants.
- Habituation - The same stimulus is repeatedly presented until the infant grows bored with what has become familiar and disengages. Researchers can measure how long until an infant becomes bored. They can also measure how distinct a second, new stimulus needs to be in order to recapture the infant’s attention.
- Evoked potentials - Electrical activity in different parts of the brain is measured while the infant watches, listens to, or is otherwise exposed to stimulation. Electrodes are attached to the surface of the skull and a computer records the pattern of electrical activity corresponding to various stimuli.
- Preferential looking - Two stimuli are simultaneously shown to an infant to determine which one they prefer, which is inferred to be the one they look at longer. Adding head-mounted, eye-tracking cameras has allowed researchers to more precisely measure preferential looking. 4. Operant conditioning - Infants are conditioned to reliably respond a certain way to a certain stimulus. Once this response is well established, the researcher can examine the conditions under which the infants will, or will not, continue to produce the behavior. Presumably, continued head turning suggests that infants do not detect a noticeable difference between the original and new stimuli, whereas lack of the conditioned response is evidence that they do distinguish between the two stimuli.
Explain how perception and action work together in the transition from crawling to walking during early childhood.
Sensory skills undergo little change during childhood, although children learn better how to use the information coming in through their senses.
Coupling perception with action to walk is a major accomplishment of childhood made understandable by the dynamic systems theory.
Cross-modal perception, the ability to recognize through
one sense what was learned by a different sense, originates in infancy but becomes more fully developed in childhood.
Provide an example of both fine motor and gross motor skills and note the typical order in which these skills develop.
Gross motor skills function first, which are skills such as kicking the legs or drawing large circles that involve large muscles and whole-body or limb movements - and then fine motor skills are mastered such as picking Cheerios off the breakfast table or writing letters of the alphabet that involve precise movements of the hands and fingers or feet and toes. This is due to the cephalocaudal principle.
Summarize the research findings supporting Dynamic Systems Theory
An example could be the transition from crawling to walking and researchers found that young toddlers could adjust their walking to changes in both their body dimensions and the slope of a walkway. According to Thelen, toddlers walk not because their genetic code programs them to do so but because they learn that walking works well given their biomechanical properties and the characteristics of the environments they must navigate.
Document the changes in attention during the adolescent period and discuss the implications of today’s multitasking lifestyle of many teens.
Basic perceptual and attentional skills are perfected during adolescence. Adolescents are better than children at sustaining their attention and using it selectively and strategically (more effective with less labour) to solve the problem at hand - going from an orienting system, one that reacts to events in the environment, and having a focusing system, one that deliberately seeks out and maintains attention to events. This is all due to improved myelination in these areas.
Teens often multitask as they can divide attention due to their longer attention spans and being able to easily shift attention, which can lead to less efficient learning of new information as they do other things while studying.
Discuss the challenges to the auditory and visual systems during adolescence.
Exposure to loud noise can cause tinnitus or ringing sounds in the ear that can be temporary or permanent. Damage to the auditory system from exposure to loud noise can accumulate over time, leading eventually to hearing impairment.
Describe effects of digital screen time on visual health.
Time spent viewing digital screens can lead to eye strain, blurred vision, and difficulty focusing.
Describe typical changes in vision and hearing that occur over adulthood and indicate how these changes may affect daily activities.
During adulthood, sensory and perceptual capacities gradually decline in most individuals, although many changes are minor and can be compensated for. Sensory thresholds—the amount of stimulation required for detection—rise, and perceptual processing of sensory information often declines. Moderate to severe declines that are not corrected can lead to declines in activities and quality of life among older adults.
