Exam 2

Question 1

Sensation

Answer 1

Processing of basic information from the external world by receptors in the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin etc.)

Question 2

Perception

Answer 2

Organizing and interpreting sensory information about the objects, events, and spatial layout of the world around us

Question 3

What is Acuity; How is it tested

Answer 3

Acuity: Ability to see “fine detail”
Testing: Preferential looking

Question 4

Preferential Looking

Answer 4

Testing: Two visual stimuli are displayed side by side, compares how long infants look at each stimuli
Proves: The infant can both discriminate between the two stimuli and the infant prefers one over the other

Question 5

Habituation

Answer 5

Involves repeated presenting an infant with particular stimuli until the infant habituates (their response declines). Then a novel stimulus is presented, if the infant dis habituates in response to the novel stimulus, the researcher infers that the infant can discriminate between old and new stimuli

Question 6

Early Limitations

Answer 6

-Preference for High Contrast (due to size, space, and shaping of cones)
-Poor Color Vision (preferring red and blue)
-Visual Scanning (short jerky movements)

Question 7

Pattern Perception

Answer 7

Prefer Mom’s face after only 12 hours
No initial preferences for particle face expression but by 9-12 months prefer smiling over angry (infants like attractive faces)

Question 8

Perceptual Constancy & Size Constancy

Answer 8

Objects appear to maintain shape and size despite constant changes in retinal image, infants have size consistency by 1 month

Question 9

Object Segregation

Answer 9

Knowing where one object ends and another begins
Cues: color, shape, texture, gaps, motion

Question 10

Intermodal Perception

Answer 10

Integrating input from two or more sensory systems

Question 11

Components of Language

Answer 11

-Phonemes: Learning the sound system of language (“beer” vs “deer)
-Morphemes: Learning the meanings of words (“cats” vs “cats”)
-Syntax: Learning the rules for combining words (grammar
dog bites man” vs “man bites dog)

Question 12

Brain Areas Associated with Language

Answer 12

-Broca: Speech production, controls speech muscles via motor cortex
-Wernicke: Speech ‘sense’, interprets auditory code

Question 13

Gene Case

Answer 13

Case: From the age of 18 months to 13 years old her parents kept her locked up in a room alone, her development was stunted (physically, metrically, and emotionally), her language never developed much beyond a toddler’s
Theory suggest developmental changes in the plasticity of language-related regions of the brain and motivational differences across age

Question 14

Second Language Learning

Answer 14

Younger = More hemispheric localization
Cerebral organization differs depending on when 2nd language is learned

Question 15

Discrimination of Non-Native Phonemes (Janet Werker)

Answer 15

By 12 months infants become less sensitive to the differences between nonnative speech sounds. Werker tested English speaking infants on their ability to discriminate speech, the infants turned their heads toward the sound source when they hear a change in sounds.

Question 16

Prosody

Answer 16

The characteristic rhythmic and intonation patterns with which a language is spoken
(basics for very early learning, large reason for why languages sound so different)

Question 17

Babbling

Answer 17

Strings of consonant-vowel syllables drawn from a fairly limited set of sounds
(begins between 6-10 months)

Question 18

Quine’s Problem

Answer 18

An infinate number of hypotheses about word meanings are possible given the input the child has.
“Gavagai”
Does it refer to Something

Question 19

Factors that Aid in Word Learning

Answer 19

-Adult Influences: quality of taking and name games
-Children’s Contributions: pragmatic cues (social context), syntactic bootstrapping (figuring out new meanings of words by using grammatical structure of the sentences)

Question 20

Daul Representation

Answer 20

Young children have substantial difficulty treating an object both as itself and as a representation of something else

Question 21

Pictures (2D)

Answer 21

Young children treat pictured objects as if they can be grasped, they think the object is real
Stops at about 2.5 years

Question 22

Scale Error (3D)

Answer 22

Toddlers can make the mistake of treating many tiny replicas as the real thing
Hard to see objects as symbols, dual representation is hard, hard to preform on tasks

Question 23

Drawings

Answer 23

When young children first start making marks on paper their focus is almost exclusively on the activity with no attempt to produce recognizable images, at about 3-4 years children begin trying to draw pictures of something

Question 24

Quinn & Eilmas

Answer 24

Tested 3-4 month olds ability to distinguish between cats and dogs
Found that even infants form categories

Question 25

Concept

Answer 25

General ideas or understandings that can be used to group together similar things, helps us simplify the world and think more efficiently

Question 26

Object Hierarchies

Answer 26

Superordinate - very specific
Subordinate - medium or in-between
Basic - first learned
(plant - tree - oak)

Question 27

Inheritance

Answer 27

3-4 year olds know that physical characteristics tend to be passed on from parent to offspring

Question 28

Essentialism

Answer 28

The view that living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are

Question 29

Counting Principles

Answer 29

-One to One Correspondence
-Stable Order
-Cardinality
-Order Irrelevance
-Abstraction

Question 30

Recognizing Goal Directed Behavior

Answer 30

The understanding that desires lead to actions is firmly established by 2 years

Question 31

Why are False-Belief Tasks Hard

Answer 31

Description: Another person believes something to be true that the child knows is false, the question is whether the child thinks that the other person will act in accord with his or her false belief or the child’s correct understanding of the situation
Challenge: Depends on whether children understand that other people’s actions are determined by the contents of their own minds rather than be the object truth of the situation

Question 32

When is Success Seen in False Belief Tasks

Answer 32

Quite a few children around 3 years old will succeed if the task is presented in a manner that facilitates understanding (if they tell the child that the two of them are going to play a trick on another child, they will correctly predict that the other child will say the box contains smarties)

Question 33

Numerical Equality

Answer 33

The idea that all sets of N objects have something in common “twoness”

Question 34

Egocentric Encoding of Space

Answer 34

The locations of objects are coded relative to the infants’ position at the time of coding

Question 35

Trouble Understanding Plants are Alive

Answer 35

Plants grow and heal themselves like all other living things but they do it very slowly which is hard for a young child to realize.
Children have a shallow and fragmented understanding and they simultaneously possess both mature and immature biological understanding.

Question 36

Mandler & McDonough

Answer 36

Very young children’s basic categories do not always match those of adults. For examples, rather than forming separate categories of cars, motorcycles, and buses, young children seem to group these objects into one category of “objects with wheels”

Question 37

Perceptual Categories

Answer 37

The grouping of objects that have somewhat similar appearances

Question 38

Telegraphic Speech

Answer 38

Short (two-word) utterances that leave out non-essential words

Question 39

What Words Are Learned Most Early On

Answer 39

Nouns. Early words often refer to family members, pets, and important objects

Question 40

Speech Stream

Answer 40

Infants use predictable sound patterns to fish out words of the passing stream of speech. This ability appears to be available at the youngest age tested, just days after birth.

Question 41

Overregulazation Errors

Answer 41

Treat irregular forms as if they were regular (‘went’ vs ‘goed’)

Question 42

Which Side of the Brian is Language Localized for Right-Handed People

Answer 42

Left

Question 43

“Species-Specific”

Answer 43

Only humans acquire language in the normal course of development

Question 44

“Species-Universal”

Answer 44

Language learning is achieve by typically developing children across the globe

Question 45

Generativity

Answer 45

Using a finite set of words and our knowledge of the systematic ways in which those word can be combined, we can generate an infinite number of senesces, expressing an infinite number of ideas