Lecture 1 - Perception

Question 1

Sensation Definition

Answer 1

Information about environment picked up by sensory receptors and transmitted to brain

Question 2

Perception Definition

Answer 2

Interpretation by the brain of this input (how we understand the events, objects and people in our environment)

Question 3

Visual Acuity Definition

Answer 3

Ability to process fine detail

Question 4

When does visual acuity develop?

Answer 4

Poor at birth, rapid increase in first 6 months.

Near adult levels by 1 year

Question 5

Visual Scanning Definition

Answer 5

The ability to track objects

Question 6

When does visual scanning develop?

Answer 6

Younger than 2 months, cannot track moving objects smoothly
1 month – focus on limited features of shape, particularly outside edges
2 months: start to focus on internal features

Question 7

When does colour vision develop?

Answer 7

Newborns can distinguish between white and red, but not other colours (ex: Adams et al. 1994)
Around 1 month, look longer at brighter, bold colours
By 4 months close to adult ability

Question 8

What is a preference test?

Answer 8

Present two stimuli at the same time and measure how long an infant looks at each.

Question 9

Franz (1961)

Answer 9

Infants spend more time looking at a face, but enjoy more complex shapes too.
1-15 week old babies prefer a more complex pattern, face or not.

Question 10

What are habituation tasks?

Answer 10

Shown interesting stimulus repeatedly so child loses interest, change to a different stimulus so infant has renewed interest and looks again (dishabituation) – this sees if infant can tell the difference between stimuli

Question 11

What are conditioning tasks?

Answer 11

Repeatedly reward target behaviour (like increased sucking rate). Infant becomes habituated to stimulus. Stimulus is altered – if infant does not increase sucking rate treats 2 stimuli as the same, if not can tell the difference.

Question 12

Face perception quote (Moulson et al, 2009)

Answer 12

“Faces are arguably the most important visual stimulus used in human social communication”

Question 13

Why is face perception useful?

Answer 13

What can you tell from a face? (species, sex, race, identity, mood, intent)
Crucial ability for successful social life.

Question 14

Maurer and Barrera (1981)

Answer 14

At 1 month there was no difference in looking times and at 2 months they preferred to look at a neutral face.

Question 15

Goren et al (1975)

Answer 15

Used moving stimuli instead of static and found newborns track schematic face more than complex patterns/blank shape.

Question 16

Johnson et al (1991)

Answer 16

Replicated Goren et al study and found that after 3 months they no longer track more

Question 17

2 Process Model researchers

Answer 17

Johnson and Morton (1991)

Question 18

2 Process Model parts

Answer 18

CONSPEC – early system (subcortical structures) biases infants towards faces, CONLEARN – later taken over by more mature system (visual cortex) and more precise recognition

Question 19

Slater et al (2000)

Answer 19

Newborns under a week old looked longer at attractive faces.

Question 20

Bushnell, 2001; Pascalis et al, 1995

Answer 20

Babies can discriminate mother’s face to others

Question 21

Walton et al (1992)

Answer 21

Infants sucked more to keep mother’s face on video at 1-4 days old

Question 22

Pascalis et al (1995)

Answer 22

Preference for mother’s face disappeared when outside of face and hairline masked, newborns use outer features to identify

Question 23

Turati et al (2006)

Answer 23

Babies could use both outer and inner features to identify a face

Question 24

Sugita et al (2008)

Answer 24

Monkeys not exposed to faces for first months of life still preferred them

Question 25

Pascalis et al (2002)

Answer 25

6 month olds could discriminate between monkey faces and human faces, 9 month old infants and adults could only discriminate between human faces

Question 26

Pascalis et al (2005)

Answer 26

If exposed to monkey faces, 9 month olds could discriminate

Question 27

“Other race” effect (Tanaka et al, 2004)

Answer 27

Adults are poorer at discriminating faces of other races compared to own race

Question 28

Kelly et al (2005)

Answer 28

At 3 months old infants prefer faces of their own race

Question 29

Sangrigoli et al (2005)

Answer 29

Korean adults adopted between 3-9 years old into Caucasian families became more accurate differentiating between Caucasian faces

Question 30

Quinn et al (2008)

Answer 30

Preference for female faces at 3 months old

Question 31

Quinn et al (2002)

Answer 31

When fathers are primary caregivers the children have a preference for their faces

Question 32

Wismer, Fries and Pollack (2004)

Answer 32

Instituationalised children showed deficits in identifying emotions in faces

Question 33

Pollack et al (2000)

Answer 33

Children raised in abusive environment show bias for angry faces

Question 34

Adult Face Perception

Answer 34

Adults can recognise familiar faces within half a second and retain information of large number of faces (90% recognition of yearbook photos in a class size of up to 900 up to 35 years later)
Some research suggests this expertise doesn’t emerge until after 30+ years of learning

Question 35

Face Specific Perceptual Development Theory

Answer 35

Ongoing development of face-specific perception mechanisms; continue to develop into late childhood and adolescence
Face perception gets better because of increased exposure / experience with faces

Question 36

General Cognitive Development Theory

Answer 36

Face perception matures early (4-5 years?)

Performance increases later as general cognitive mechanisms improve.

Question 37

Disproportionate Inversion Effect

Answer 37

More accurate when faces are upright, larger effect for face versus non-face objects

Question 38

Holistic/Configural Processing

Answer 38

Integration of information from all regions of face, code spacing between face and features

Question 39

Crookes and McKone (2009)

Answer 39

As young as 4-5 years old adult-like face perception is developed

Question 40

Susilo et al (2013)

Answer 40

Tested over 2000 18-33 year olds and controlled for non-face visual recognition, sex and own race bias. Positive association between age and facial recognition abilities and conclude results support “late maturation hypothesis”

Question 41

Young and Burton (2018)

Answer 41

Differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces in adult face perception

Question 42

Jenkins et al (2011)

Answer 42

Quizzed UK university students to see how many of a list of Dutch celebrity photos are the same person and they overestimated. Dutch students did not

Question 43

ASD and social cognition

Answer 43

Trouble recognising familiar people, remembering faces and interpreting eye-gaze and emotions

Question 44

William’s Syndrome

Answer 44

Unfamiliar faces are seen as more approachable and they have a prolonged face gaze (Riby et al, 2008)

Question 45

Prosopagnosia (face blindness)

Answer 45

Damage or abnormalities in right fusiform gyrus (due to stroke or brain injury)
Congenital prosopagnosia starts from birth and runs in families
There are different degrees of severity