Lecture 3: Perception Motor

Question 1

What is Sensation?

Answer 1

sensory receptor neurons detect information and transmit it to the brain

Question 2

What is Perception?

Answer 2

the psychological process of
organizing and interpreting sensory input

Question 3

What Is Gestalt theory of perception?

Answer 3

Principles or laws of human perception that describe humans’ spontaneous and natural organization of visual stimuli into meaningful
patterns, such as perceiving objects as whole

Question 4

What is Ecological theory of perception?

Answer 4

Eleanor and James Gibson - highlights the evolutionary foundations of perception and
connections between perception and action

Question 5

What is Affordances for Action?

Answer 5

An individual’s interpretation of which actions are possible, and which are not possible based
on their perceptions

– E.g., When infants determine that a flat surface
offers the opportunity for walking

Question 6

How do we test infants?

Answer 6

1. Preferential-looking tests
2. Habituation-recovery tests
3. Contingent reinforcement studies

Question 7

What is Preferential Looking?

Answer 7

When 2 stimuli’s are present to measure attention to both

– If infant pays more attention to one stimulus, s/he:
* Notices the difference
* “Prefers” one stimulus over the other

Question 8

What is Habituation-Recovery?

Answer 8

When 1 stimulus is presented until infant becomes “bored”

– Present new stimulus
– If infant pays more attention to the new stimulus, s/he:
* Notices the difference

Question 9

How can we measure attention?

Answer 9

– Overt behaviour
– Physiological measures

Question 10

What is Contingent-Reinforcement Studies?

Answer 10

• Operant conditioning
• Infants increase a specific behavior in response to certain stimuli to obtain reward
  – E.g., infants’ sucking behaviors in response to
  hearing their mothers’ voice

Question 11

What is the most studied behaviour in infant perception?

Answer 11

Infant vision

Question 12

What does infant vision include?

Answer 12

– actively looking
– tracking objects and people
– recognizing familiar, loved faces

Question 13

What is Visual acuity?

Answer 13

How sharp is a babies’ vision?

Question 14

By what age do children see 20/20 vision

Answer 14

Age 6

Question 15

How do developmental scientists test infant visual acuity?

Answer 15

A slightly modified preferential-looking experiment offers one approach. For example, researchers present infants with two screens, one containing a solid gray panel and the other a panel of black and white stripes. When the black and white stripes move progressively closer together, the stripes blend visually until the striped panel resembles the gray panel (black and white blend to make gray)

Question 16

What is Tracking motion?

Answer 16

Newborns move their heads in response to moving stimuli

– Jerky eye movements until 2 months of age, with further
development through 4 or 5 months

Question 17

What is a Good continuation?

Answer 17

A Gestalt principle of organization that claims a
natural tendency for individuals to view objects or
stimuli as continuous or whole

Question 18

What is anticipatory eye
movement?

Answer 18

shifting the eyes before something occurs, as though predicting what will happen next— starts around 6 months of age

Question 19

Depth and distance are signaled by cues from what?

Answer 19

two eyes—binocular cues, and also from one eye—monocular cues.

Question 20

What are binocular cues

Answer 20

Binocular cues arise because the two eyes have different views of the world and thus send different signals to the brain.

Question 21

What are monocular cues

Answer 21

Monocular cues also provide information about depth and distance through information about visual angles: Distant objects produce smaller angles and smaller objects on the retina relative to close objects.

Question 22

What is Perceptual narrowing?

Answer 22

A developmental process characterized by a diminished ability to distinguish among less frequently-encountered stimuli

Question 23

How can we explain an infants early tendency to look at faces?

Answer 23

Infants’ early tendency to look at faces may be explained by a bias to look at things that contain a density of features in the top half. When researchers compared newborns’ looking to faces configured in different ways, babies spent more time looking at upright than upside down faces

Question 24

What can the fetus hear everything clearly?

Answer 24

Fetuses can hear in the last 3 months before birth

• Newborns hear quite well, but:
  – Sounds must be louder for newborn to hear
  – Sounds in the range of human voices are heard best

Question 25

What is Absolute threshold?

Answer 25

minimum sound level of stimulus to detect a sound

Question 26

What is Relative threshold?

Answer 26

minimum difference in loudness or pitch to discriminate between sounds

Question 27

Do newborns prefer hearing speech more than non-speech sounds?

Answer 27

YES!
– Mother’s voice over stranger’s voice
– “Baby talk” over adult-directed speech
– Native language over different languages

Question 28

What is Perceptual narrowing?

Answer 28

By 4 months, infants prefer music of their own culture;
by 12 months, difficulty discriminating rhythmic
structures of other cultures

Question 29

What do newborns think about music?

Answer 29

Newborn brains respond to variations in music (pitch,
pitch changes, rhythm)

Question 30

Who is William Thierry Preyer?

Answer 30

English physiologist who
systematically documented changes in his own son’s motor skills from birth to 3 years of
age

• Proposed a common and
  universal sequence of
  motor development
  across species

Question 31

What is Gessell & Motor Milestones?

Answer 31

American child psychologist who tracked the motor behaviors and physical growth of 107 infants between 4 to 56
weeks

Question 32

What is Maturation?

Answer 32

Maturation is a genetically determined process that
controls and preserves the order of behaviors and
skills as children develop

Question 33

What did Gesell base his claims of maturation on?

Answer 33

Gesell based claims of maturation on “co-twin” study
on stair climbing in identical twin girls (Gesell & Thompson,
1929)

– Trained twin exceeded non-trained twin, but the other twin learned faster and
caught up
– Claim: when maturationally ready, learning is faster

Question 34

Who is Myrtle McGraw and Motor Practice?

Answer 34

McGraw engaged in a controversial and highly provocative study with twin boys, Johnny and Jimmy, decades before universities established ethical guidelines for human research. Trained one twin on specific
skills, while the other twin in
crib

– Trained twin showed early
performance on specific
motor skills that were
trained, but not on those
untrained

Question 35

Who is Esther Thelen & Dynamic Systems?

Answer 35

American psychologist Esther Thelen; Dynamic systems: considers the many interacting forces that influence infants’ motor
skills, beyond “top-down” brain explanations

Question 36

What is Newborn stepping?

Answer 36

a phenomenon in which newborns demonstrate spontaneous, coordinated “stepping” movements by lifting one leg and then the other when held over a surface—presents a starting point for understanding how something as seemingly simple as body weight can affect the expression of a behavior

Question 37

What is Posture?

Answer 37

The position in which a person holds their head and body, and ability to stably maintain
the body’s position
– Stable posture facilitates action
– Unstable posture impedes action

• Critical to all motor skills (e.g., sitting,
  reaching, standing)

Question 38

When and how do infants sit?

Answer 38

In North America, infants begin to sit independently around 5-7 months, in order to sit they must maintain posture, and they accumulate hours of practice with various types of supported sitting—being held in their caregivers’ arms, propped up with pillows, and secured in contraptions such as infant seats, swings, car seats, and high chairs.

Question 39

How do infants stand up during the first 7-13 months?

Answer 39

infants use furniture and other
supports to pull up to a standing position and then
“cruise” sideways while holding on

Question 40

When does an infant walk independently?

Answer 40

at 1 years old

Question 41

What is Maturational Viewpoint?

Answer 41

Unfolding of a genetically programmed series of events

Question 42

What is Experiential Viewpoint?

Answer 42

Opportunities to practice are important

Question 43

What is the back to sleep campaign?

Answer 43

The Back to Sleep campaign (now called the Safe to Sleep campaign), implemented in 1994, to prevents SIDS

Question 44

What is SIDS?

Answer 44

sudden infant death syndrome

Question 45

How does the role of experience differ for each child?

Answer 45

Infants growing up in different parts of the world are
exposed to different opportunities to practice such
motor skills as sitting and walking