Chapter 5: Perceptual Development

Question 1

An example of how our brain constructs our perceptions

Answer 1

Put two thumbs together and close left eye. Stare at right while moving them apart. Left thumb disappears because of our blind spot.

Question 2

What is the function of perception?

Answer 2

to allow us to behave sensibly in the world with respect to our reproductive interests.

Question 3

An example of how perception informs behaviour

Answer 3

Verbal match- subject looks at X in tape meters away. Couldn’t say how far the distance is but could make a behavioural match- in the dark could walk until they think they reached it and they do this well

Question 4

An example of action relevant perception

Answer 4

people better at softball perceive the ball as larger, and those good at golf perceive the hole as bigger

Question 5

Perception is not…

Answer 5

what’s true in the world

Question 6

Infants are attracted to things that are helpful. Beauty is adaptive. At what ages do infants perceive different features of the face?

Answer 6

At 1 month, infants stare at contours of face. At 2 months, infants look at interior of features.

Question 7

____ is least developed prenatally, and _____is better developed. Why?

Answer 7

sight; hearing

In final stages of pregnancy, abdominal muscles are thin, allowing fetus to hear mother and other voices

Question 8

Why does the innate versus learned dichotomy not make sense?

Answer 8

There is always an environment to learn from, including the prenatal one.

Question 9

What evidence is there that infants develop senses prenatally?

Answer 9

• responsive to touch 8 weeks into gestation
• sweetened amniotic fluid tastes better
• smell part of flavour of fluid

Question 10

Hearing does not get adult-like until…

Answer 10

5-6 years of age.

Question 11

______ is the most developed sense, adult-like at birth

Answer 11

touch

Question 12

Define the inversion effect

Answer 12

a disruption in face processing that is observed when a face is inverted.

Question 13

Holistic processing

Answer 13

the integration of visual information from the whole of the perceived visual region of interest rather than component parts.

Question 14

What is the U-shaped curve in development with an example?

Answer 14

time course over which an individual displays a competence, then fails to display the same competence, and then displays it again at a later age.
Babies orient to faces at birth and 2 months, but not 1 month.

Question 15

Experience-Expectant Learning

Answer 15

A learning mechanism that is designed to respond to species-typical environmental input, critical periods important.

Question 16

Why are critical periods adaptive?

Answer 16

They are efficient, balancing costs and benefits. After it is most typically useful, the expensive learning mechanism is dismantled.

Question 17

What did Hubel and Wiesel tell us?

Answer 17

Nature and nurture work together by design in the development of ocular dominance columns.

Question 18

Perceptual narrowing

Answer 18

perceptual mechanisms become more specialized such that infants lose the ability to discriminate between categories that are irrelevant.

Question 19

Sleeper Effect

Answer 19

an effect that is evident only some time after exposure to a particular environmental cue. For example, babies born with cataracts have surgery before 1 year and can see. They do not show holistic processing of faces even though this doesn’t develop until 6 years of age.

Question 20

What do constancies (size, shape etc.) remind us about the visual system?

Answer 20

it is not designed to see the world as it is. It is designed to create representations that inform behavioural decisions.

Question 21

Intermodal perception

Answer 21

Babies can make a connection between what they feel and what they see. If presented with two pacifiers and one was in the baby’s mouth, they know which one it was. Piaget would not have predicted they have this representation