Learning to Perceive and Understand the World Flashcards
what were debates about epistemology influential for?
empiricist and nativist positions which shape debate in developmental psychology
what does piaget’s sensorimotor constructionist account consist of?
considers inheritance and experience interactions to shape development, by qualitative shifts in perception and understanding
which perceptual developmental theory did gibson suggest?
rather than proceeding through a process of gradual integration of features, perceptual development might be a process of gradual differentiation
what do early observation techniques provide?
such as baby biographies (Darwin, 1887) provide rich individual detail, but lack objective sensitivity
piaget’s clinical method involved presenting informal manual search tasks to infants and adjusting their complexity depending on success
which techniques have been developed to investigate perceptual/cognitive abilities?
preferential looking, violation of expectation, visual habituation, and anticipatory looking
primary limitation of perceptual ability measures
is that behavioural immaturity may potentially obscure perceptual competence
infants and imaging techniques
imaging techniques (EEG and fNIRS) are increasingly being used with infants to trace development of brain function in early development
providing good temporal and spatial resolution respectively
frantz (1961)
provided first evidence that infants could distinguish visual forms early in life, via visual preferences towards eye figures and schematic faces over other stimuli
what is looking behaviour?
the most fruitful way of investigating visual perception in infants
object perception/discrimination after birth
slater (1983) found newborns had the ability to discriminate shapes
whereas cohen and younger (1983) showed the way they discriminate forms changes within the first few months:
- 1.5m can dishabituate to novel orientation
- 3.5m can dishabituate to novel angle
light field and surface reflectance
yang (2014) indicates infants between 3-4m detect changes in light field, but not surface reflectance, whereas this occurs the other way around in 7-8m.
slater’s fixed-trial familiarisation (1991)
demonstrates newborns could perceive objects to constant size, shape, and form, in the first few days of life
unlike younger, who believed they could only perceive salient shapes in the environment
what did spelke (1988) find with modified habituation and looking preferences?
object permanence
evidence of infants’ innate understanding that common motion signifies the object is hidden behind the occluder
violation of expectation
baillargeon (1987)
shows 3.5m infants look longer at impossible events – evidence of early knowledge and expectations for permanence and solidity
piaget’s disputes about object permanence
(1954) observed that 6m (stage III) show striking neglect of objects once hidden
what does spelke argue about core knowledge?
we have innate neural systems providing us with core knowledge about the world, such as 2.5m understanding solidity seen in the solidity violation (1992)
issues with the solidity violation and core knowledge
infants are still unable to retrieve solid objects in manual tasks by 2y (hood, 1998)
looking behaviour demonstrates a type of knowledge which fails to meet piaget’s criteria of permanence
what did piaget propose instead of object permanence?
reciprocal organisations of sensorimotor schemas → objective representations
multisensory links may be involved in developing the full understanding of objects
how does MS information present considerable challenges to newborns?
MS information arrives at different latencies, levels of acuity, and in different spatial formats, which are all processed into information that moves relative to one another
brain, body, and sensorimotor abilities change dramatically across development
evidence of infants’ good MS abilities
due to early sensitivity to amodal MS properties, which inspired the intersensory redundancy hypothesis (bahrick and lickliter, 2000)
intersensory redundancy hypothesis (bahrick and lickliter, 2000)
amodal information (available early) – MS information is redundant across modalities and coded in common, representational formats
arbitrary correspondence (learnt) – MS correspondences carry distinct information in separate modalities, e.g., colour and sound
what does slater (1999) suggest amodal audiovisual presentations assist?
infants’ learning of arbitrary relations
this helps assist learning at 5m about modality-specific aspects of stimuli, to learn their MS world
molyneux’s question
(1690) questioned whether a man born blind could distinguish between a cube and sphere through sight alone?
held (2011) said this was not possible initially, but people were able to learn very quickly – explains competence in infants via fast learning
visually impaired infants’ learning to bind the senses from experience
auditory localisation was unimpaired
advantages in:
tactile localisation
audio tactile spatial integration
dealing with MS spatial conflicts
face preferences in utero
preferential tracking of faces at 30 minutes old (johnson, 1991) shows newborns prefer direct eye-contact (farroni, 2002) across cultures due to faces providing communicative information
reid (2017) examined whether preferential tracking was present in utero via ultrasound.
learning of speech in utero
foetal auditory system functions well before birth, as evidenced by non-nutritive sucking techniques showing newborns could differentiate towards their mothers’ voice (decasper and fifer, 1980)
preferences for maternal odours in utero
olfactory learning develops at 4-8w gestation (rekow, 2021) and preference for maternal milk and amniotic fluid odours occurs at birth (schaal and marlier, 1998)
preferences for maternal odours in utero- transnatal chemosensory continuity hypothesis
uterine chemosensory environment prepares infants for their postnatal sensory world (schaal, 2005)
and may also increase their visual sensitivity
learning of flavours in utero
olfactory learning helps infants navigate their postnatal perceptual world, as uterine exposure can influence food preferences, such as anise (schaal, 1998) and carrot juice (menella, 2001)
perceptual narrowing of speech sound discrimination
at 6m, they discriminate between phonemes across languages, but not at 12m (werker, 1984) – maturation.
what does F2F exposure to non-native language help with?
retaining non-native speech sounds (kuhl, 2003)
perceptual narrowing of face perception
6m could discriminate between human and monkey faces, whereas 10m could only discriminate human faces
what is perceptual narrowing?
reduction in sensitivity of task-irrelevant domains to develop specialisation
evidence of increased functional specialisation in face perception with age
adults show specific response to upright faces (de haan, 2002)
seen in FMRI studies of more brain regions becoming involved in face processing and more specialisation of particular areas with age
interactive specialisation in the subcortical and cortical face system
subcortical (mediates preferential tracking)
cortical (develops later face preferences)
these arise from the innate bias to track faces
the developing social brain (lloyd-fox, 2013)
greater blood flow in pSTS and TPJ in response to visual observation of actions correlated with fine motor skill
