Development of infant's perceptual skills and knowledge over the first 2 years of life

Question 1

Essay structure?

Answer 1

1. Structure
2. Infant perception
   - pattern and face perception
   - depth perception
   - sensory integration and intermodel perception
   - cultural differences
3. Infants knowledge of the world
   - introduce Piaget and sensorimotor period
   - problem solving skills
   - imitation
   - development of object permanence
4. Conclusion

Question 2

What 4 sub-sections would you break infant perception into?

Answer 2

1. pattern and face perception
2. depth perception
3. sensory integration and intermodal perception
4. cultural differences in perception

Question 3

What 4 subsections would you break infants knowledge of the world into?

Answer 3

1. Introduce piaget
2. introduce sensorimotor period and criticism of piaget
3. problem solving skills
4. imitation
5. development of object permanence

Question 4

Infants’ senses are much more …. than was previously thought.

Answer 4

developed at birth

Question 5

we know that a newborn infant can hear about as well as

Answer 5

an adult with a head cold

Question 6

How well do neonates tactile, olfactory and taste senses operate?

Answer 6

at a similar capacity to adults

Question 7

Neonates visual system lags behind other sensory systems - what is visual acuity in a neonate?

Answer 7

20/600

Question 8

Infants’ colour vision is still developing - how do we know?

Answer 8

They have trouble distinguishing blue, yellow and gree from white

Question 9

What is an infants visual acuity at 6 months?

Answer 9

20/100

Question 10

What age does an infants visual system reach full adult maturity?

Answer 10

6 years of age

Question 11

Understanding that infants had such developed senses led to questions of

Answer 11

infant perception

Question 12

Understanding that infants had such developed senses led to questions of infant perception - what do we mean by this?

Answer 12

how do infants make sense of the sensory inputs they are receiving?

Question 13

For the purposes of this short essay we are going to focus on X, as this is the sensory system that has been subject to the majority of research; we will also briefly discuss the impact of Y on perception.

Answer 13

vision

culture

Question 14

Martin Banks and colleagues have summarised the looking preferences of young infants quite succinctly:

Answer 14

babies prefer to look at whatever they see well (Banks and Ginsburg, 1985

Question 15

As to what infants prefer to look at in relation to patterns:

Answer 15

research has revealed that very young infants prefer to look at high-contrast patterns with many sharp boundaries between light and dark areas, and at moderately complex patterns that have curvilinear features

Question 16

As to what infants prefer to look at in relation to patterns: research has revealed that very young infants prefer to look at high-contrast patterns with many sharp boundaries between light and dark areas, and at moderately complex patterns that have curvilinear features. This has led some researchers to argue …

Answer 16

argue that infants have an innate preference for looking at and recognising faces (Walton et al., 1992; Slater & Kirby, 1998).

Question 17

What remains a controversial assertion?

Answer 17

that infants have an innate preference for looking at and recognising faces

Question 18

Describe a piece of evidence that indicates that recognising faces is not innate?

Answer 18

Arcaro and colleagues (2017) found that monkeys raised without exposure to faces did not develop specialised face domains like face exposed monkeys

Question 19

Who devised the visual cliff?

Answer 19

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960)

Question 20

Why did Gibson and Walk (1960) develop the visual cliff?

Answer 20

to determine whether infants can perceive depth

Question 21

Of what did the visual cliff consist?

Answer 21

an elevated glass platform divided into two sections by a center board. On the ‘shallow’ side, a checkerboard pattern is placed directly under the glass. On the ‘deep’ side, the pattern is placed several feet below the glass, creating the illusion of a sharp drop-off, or a ‘visual cliff’.

Question 22

In the visual cliff experiment (Gibson and Walk, 1960), how does the experimentor test the infant’s depth perception?

Answer 22

by placing him on the center board and then asking the child’s mother to try to coax the infant to cross both the ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ sides.

Question 23

What were the findings of the visual cliff experiment? What do they indicate?

Answer 23

Testing infants 6-6.5 months of age and older, Gibson and Walk (1960) found that 90% would cross the shallow side, but fewer than 10% would cross the deep side. This indicates that infants of crawling age perceive depth.

Question 24

Using the same idea of the visual cliff - who assessed infants below crawling age? How did they do it? What did they find?

Answer 24

Campos and colleagues (1970) recorded changes in infants’ heart rates when they were lowered face down over the ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ sides of the visual cliff. Babies as young as 2 months showed a decrease in heart rate when over the deep side, but no change in heart rate on the shallow side.

A decrease in heart rate is associated with interest, not fear, indicating that the 2 month old infants could detect a difference, but did not year associate a drop off with fear.

Question 25

What is a decrease in heart rate associated with?

Answer 25

Interest

Question 26

What does sensory integration refer to?

Answer 26

the organisation of information received through the senses

Question 27

What does intermodal perception refer to?

Answer 27

to the ability to use one sensory modality to identity a stimulus or pattern of stimuli that is already familiar through another modality

Question 28

Are the senses integrate at birth?

Answer 28

Yes

Question 29

Who showed that the senses are integrated at birth? With what senses?

Answer 29

Bower and colleagues (1970)

with vision and touch

Question 30

Who were the participants in Bower’s experiment? What happened in the experiment?

Answer 30

The subjects were 8-31 day infants who could see a virtual object well within reaching distance while they were wearing virtual reality goggles. If the infant reached for it, their hand would feel nothing.

Question 31

What did Bower and colleagues (1970) find? What do their results suggest?

Answer 31

Bower and colleagues found that the infants did reach for the virtual object and that they often became frustrated to tears when they failed to touch it.

These results suggest that vision and touch are integrated in neonates: neonates expect to feel objects they can see and reach, and an incongruity between vision and the tactile sense is discomforting.

Question 32

Although intermodal perception has never been observed in newborns, it seems that babies only one month old have the ability to …

Answer 32

recognise by sight at least some of the objects they have previously sucked.

Question 33

In relation to intermodal perception - what did Gibson and Walker (1984) do?

Answer 33

In one study, Eleanor Gibson and Arlene Walker (1984) allowed 1 month old infants to suck either a rigid cylinder or a spongy pliable one. The two objects were then displayed visually to illustrate that the spongy cylinder would bend and the rigid one would not.

Question 34

In their study on neonate intermodal perception, what did Gibson and Walker (1984) find? What did the authors conclude?

Answer 34

The researchers found that infants who had sucked on a spongy object preferred to look at a rigid one, while infants who had sucked on a rigid one now preferred to look at a pliable one. The authors concluded that the infants could ‘visualise’ the object they had sucked and now considered it to be less interesting than the other, new, stimulus.

Question 35

Why is understanding whether there are cultural differences in what infants perceive interesting?

Answer 35

because it can tell us whether or not perception is universally the same across the globe, or whether or not the environment and culture in which we grow up can alter what we perceive, and the extent to which this happens.

Question 36

Studies examining cross-language speech perception suggest …

Answer 36

suggest that infants are born with universal sensitivity to the phonemes present in all language.

Question 37

Studies examining cross-language speech perception suggest that infants are born with universal sensitivity to the phonemes present in all language. For example?

Answer 37

, a study of English-speaking adults, Hindi-speaking adults, and 6-8 month old infants from English speaking families demonstrated that infants can distinguish two distinct phonemes with similar sounds in both English and Hindi /ta/ and /da/ in English, and the retroflex /D/ and dental /d/ in Hindi - whereas adults distinguished only between the different phonemes in their native languages (Werker et al., 1981)

Question 38

When does perceptual narrowing for speech occur?

Answer 38

Between 7-10 months

Question 39

What do we mean by perceptual narrowing for speech?

Answer 39

whereby the infants become less able to differentiate between non-native speech sounds.

Question 40

What do Werker’s findings highlight?

Answer 40

that the growth of perceptual abilities is not simply a matter of learning new skills; it is also a matter of losing unnecessary ones.

Question 41

What are we going to use as a framework to examine how infants’ knowledge of the world develops over the first two year?

Answer 41

Piaget’s influential theory of child cognitive development

Question 42

We will begin by introducing…, and…; we will then look at…

Answer 42

Piaget’s understanding of what infants know about the world

how this knowledge develops in the first two years of life

later research to understand how contemporary researchers understand infant cognition.

Question 43

Piaget identified four major periods, or stages of cognitive development - what?

Answer 43

the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the preoperational stage (2-7 years), the concrete operational stage (7-11 years), and the formal operational stage (11 years and beyond).

Question 44

To Piaget, these stages of intellectual growth represented …

Answer 44

qualitatively different levels of functioning, and formed an invariant developmental sequence.

Question 45

The first stage of Piaget’s theory lasts from birth to approximately age 2 and is centred on…

Answer 45

The infant trying to make sense of the world

Question 46

During the sensorimotor stage, and infant’s knowledge of the world is limited to his/her [blank] and [blank]

Answer 46

sensory perceptions

motor activities

Question 47

The coordination of sensory inputs and motor capabilities to form X allows them to learn about their environment

Answer 47

schemes

Question 48

Over the course of 2 years, the infant changes from mainly a X to a Y being; an [blank]

Answer 48

reflexive
reflective
active problem solver

Question 49

There are three aspects of development that are central to the sensorimotor period:

Answer 49

problem solving skills, imitation, and the growth of object permanence.

Question 50

According to Piaget the earliest forms of problem solving behaviour occurs in which sensorimotor stage?

Answer 50

4th - coordination of secondary reactions (8-12 months)

Question 51

According to Piaget the earliest forms of problem solving behaviour occurs in the fourth sensorimotor stage: coordination of secondary reactions (8-12 months. However an earlier display of symbolic ability is illustrated in innovative research by who?

Answer 51

Karen Wynn 1992

Question 52

What happened in Wynn’s experiment?

Answer 52

In Wynn’s experiment, 5 month old infants were shown a sequence of events that involved the addition and subtraction of dolls from a model screen; one of the sequences led to a possible outcome, whereas the other led to an impossible outcome.

Question 53

Step by step what happened in Wynn’s experiment assessing 5 month olds’ symbolic ability? (4 steps)

Answer 53

1. Infants sat and watched as an object was placed on a model stage
2. A screen was then raised hiding the object
3. The infant then watched as a second object was placed behind the screen
4. The screen was then lowered revealing 2 objects (the possible outcome) or one object (the impossible outcome)

Question 54

What did Wynn’s experiment of 5 month olds’ symbolic ability find?

Answer 54

Infants seem not to be making only a perceptual discrimination between two displays. Rather, when they watch as one item is added to another behind a screen, they expect to see two items when the screen is dropped. This requires a certain level of object permanence and memory, but also some rudimentary ideas about addition. These findings are provocative and suggest substantially greater symbolic (quantitative) knowledge in young infants than proposed by Piaget.

Question 55

Piaget recognised the adaptive importance of X, and he was very interested in its development

Answer 55

imitation

Question 56

What did Piaget’s observations on imitation lead him to believe?

Answer 56

That infants are incapable of imitating novel responses displayed by a model until 8 - 12 months of age, and that these imitations don’t become precise until 12 - 18 months of age

Question 57

What is deferred imitation?

Answer 57

the ability to reproduce the behaviour of an absent model

Question 58

According to Piaget, when does deferred imitation emerge?

Answer 58

18-24 months of age (1951)

Question 59

According to Piaget, deferred imitation – the ability to reproduce the behaviour of an absent model – first appears at 18 to 24 months of age (Piaget, 1951). However, more recent research has shown that …

Answer 59

6 month olds are able to imitate very simple acts (such as button pressing to activate a noise-making toy) after 24 hours (Colin & Hayne, 1999), and toddlers have been shown to imitate particularly memorable events up to 12 months after first witnessing them (Bauer et al., 2000; Meltzoff, 1995).

Question 60

What is the most notable achievement of the sensorimotor period?

Answer 60

The development of object permanence

Question 61

What is object permanence

Answer 61

The idea that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable through the other senses

Question 62

When did Piaget think that object permanence emerged?

Answer 62

Between 18-24 months of age

Question 63

Piaget thought that object permanence emerged between 18-24 months. However, …

Answer 63

research suggests that infants know something about the permanency of objects very early on; such knowledge does not have to be ‘constructed’ as Piaget proposed, but is part of an infant’s genetic heritage

Question 64

research suggests that infants know something about the permanency of objects very early on; such knowledge does not have to be ‘constructed’ as Piaget proposed, but is part of an infant’s genetic heritage. Indeed, (experiment example)

Answer 64

Renee Ballairgeon found that infants understand object permanence earlier than Piaget thought; in several studies she analysed infant looking responses to the outcomes of events that seemed to violate physics principles – she found that infants as young as 3.5 months will look longer at impossible events indicating that they understand on some level that the object should not just simply disappear.

Question 65

Who conducted an experiment similar to Renee Ballairgeon’s? What kind of experiment?

Answer 65

Similarly, Bower et al. (1971) designed a task that used gaze tracking to decipher whether infants of 5 months old understand object permanence.

Question 66

What were the steps in Bower et als (1971) study? 3 points

Answer 66

1. Four month old infants were shown a train moving along a track
2. The train went behind a screen that blocked the infant’s view
3. The infant’s would direct their gaze to the other side of the screen, where the train would be expected to emerge

Question 67

What do Bower et al’s (1971) findings suggest?

Answer 67

an understanding that the train still exists even though the infant cannot see it.

Question 68

What happened in Bower et als (1971) follow up studies?

Answer 68

In follow up studies things were arranged so that instead of the train, a different object emerged from the other side of the screen. When this happened, some of the infants showed signs of surprise, suggesting again that they expected the train to emerge.

Question 69

To conclude

Answer 69

it is clear that infants develop rapidly over the first two years of life, both in their perceptual abilities and in their knowledge of the world