Ecological Approach to Perceptual Development - SPEHAR

Question 1

Traditional view of perception

Answer 1

Sensation: occurs when external physical stimulation activates sensory receptors
• (eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, skin) and is considered highly ambiguous;

Perception: interpretation of sensation; often with help from non-perceptual
• information and processes (memory, reasoning, decision making, etc..);
• Implications for the deve domain and concept of perceptual learning

Question 2

Traditional view of perceptual development: enrichment theory of perceptual learning

Answer 2

• Humans classified as altricial –helpless and immature at birth as opposed to precocial or mature, mobile and functional
• Marsupials, rodents,… - Alticial means “requiring nourishment” and refers to the need for young to be fed and taken care of for a long duration.
• Megapodes (Australian brushturkey) - hatch with open eyes, bodily coordination and strength; are able to run, pursue prey, and, in some species, fly on the same day they hatch.

1. Infants’ perceptual experience is:
   “Blooming, buzzing confusion…” William James, 1890;
   “The world is a world of pictures lacking in depth or constancy, permanence or identity which, disappear or reappear capriciously.” Piaget, 1954)
2. Children start with primitive and simple schemas and add information to existing schemas over repeated exposure with an object; elaborating or enriching a schema until they can distinguish among different objects.
3. Continued re-exposure leads to schema reformation as individuals engage with their environments and develop more complex schemas:
   Perceptual experience becomes progressively more inferential and based on learned assumptions.

we must add to sensory stimulation by drawing on stored knowledge in order to perceive a meaningful world.

Question 3

Ecological Approach to Perceptual Development: Differentiation View of Perceptual Learning

Answer 3

1. Perceptual abilities that are essential for survival are present at birth;
   a. “The competent Infant”: Like all animals, humans have evolved in an environment of objects and events that are highly structured and that need to be perceived accurately in order to survive;
2. Sensory stimulation is not ambiguous but highly structured and patterned:
   a. It provides a direct, rich, dynamic, and continuous source of information and perception is a process of “information pick-up”;
3. Two important aspects of differentiation view of perceptual learning and ecological approach to perceptual development:
   a. Detection of distinctive features: the process whereby perceptual information becomes increasingly differentiated and specific to the things in the world;
   b. Perception of affordances: what one can do with those things (perceptual affordances).

Question 4

Differentiation View of Perceptual Learning: Distinctive Features

Answer 4

• the process during which perceptual information becomes increasingly specific
• Distinctive features are dimensions on which two or more objects differ and can be discriminated;
• A novice wine taster can only distinguish reds from whites, whereas a connoisseur perceives differences that correspond to specific grapes, regions, and sometimes even harvest years. During perceptual learning, small differences – differences that exist in the chemical signatures of different wines – become more easily distinguished;

e.g. celebrities

Question 5

Differentiation View of Perceptual Learning: Affordances

Answer 5

o Affordances are perceived functional properties of objects in relation to the observer: they specify which actions and interactions with the environment are possible
e.g. light switch and plugs
o Body scaling affordances- firefighters, pregnancy pack fitting thru places

Question 6

Ecological Approach to Perceptual Development- Continued Perception-Action Interaction

Answer 6

• Perception guides action <–> action generates perceptual info
• Optic flow highly structured
• Babies over shoulder, supine, crawling, walking
• AR showing speed to which people are comfortable at
• Kids fall when wall moves in
• Motor training improves object exploration (Velcro mittens)
• Prism goggles

Question 7

Successful Adaptation Requires Active Interaction with the World

Answer 7

• Held and Hein (1958)
• Participants wore displacement prisms and measured errors in reaching behavior
• Three conditions:
• Active arm movement (participant moves arm back and forth)
• Passive arm movement (arm strapped into a moving cradle— no control)
• No arm movement –
• Result: adaptation occurred only for active movement
• Hein (1980): subjects with up-down reversals showed experiential adaptation within a few days if allowed to actively explore the world. Subjects pushed around in wheelchairs did not adapt;

Question 8

Direct Perception of Objects’ Function: Historical Origins

Answer 8

• Werner was among the first Gestalt psychologists to raise the possibility that certain aspects of object’s function could be perceived directly: “physiognomic character” of perceptions
• percieve> recognise>then retrieve intended function

Question 9

Physiognomic characteristics

Answer 9

• Two modes of perception
• Geometrical-technical mode of perception: perceiving objects in terms of their objective, measurable qualities;
• Physiognomic Perception: perceiving and reacting to stimulus according to their dynamic, emotional, expressive qualities;
o Physiognomic says orange is warmer, blue is colder, walking slow is sad, walking fast is angry

Question 10

People use information from physical features and nonverbal behaviors to form impressions of individuals

Answer 10

o happy expression, with upturned eyebrows and upward curving mouth,  trustworthy
o angry expression, with downturned eyebrows  untrustworthy

Question 11

T OR F

7-month-old infants are sensitive to facial signs of trustworthiness but not dominance.

Answer 11

T

Question 12

Physiognomic Perception and Intersensory Experiences

Answer 12

e.g. maluma and takete

Question 13

Synaesthesia

Answer 13

“an involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association”
• Five main diagnostic features
• Involuntary
• Sensations projected onto environment (i.e. real)
• Sensations remain the same with time and situation
• Memorable
• Emotional
e.g. texts, sounds, smell  colour

Question 14

Integrating Sight and Sound

Answer 14

• Infants look at the screen consistent with the sound being played (Spelke, 1976).
• 4- month-olds can integrate the following:
• Emotion (facial expressions with voice)
• Gender (male voice with male face)
• Speech sounds (vowel sounds with mouth movements)
• Speech synchrony (soundtrack with mouth movements)
• Number (items in a display with number of drumbeats)

Question 15

The neonatal synaesthesia hypothesis

Answer 15

• Cross-modal effects in infants and children could be understood in terms of a condition principally known in adults as “synesthesia”.
• Neuronal Hyper-connectivity: The Cross-Talk

Hypothesis: synesthesia results from an abnormally high number of connections between certain areas in the cortex

Question 16

Heinz Werner: Physiognomic Perception and Developmental Synesthesia

Answer 16

• Both developmentally primitive; exist prior to differentiation of the senses into separate modalities