Lecture 3 Perceptual and Motor Development Flashcards
what is Sensation?
sensory receptor neurons detect
information and transmit it to the brain
begins when a stimulus in the environment
activates receptors in the sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth,
and skin). Receptors are neurons that convert the stimulus into
signals that are sent to the brain. For example, light activates
electromagnetic receptors in the eyes that then transmit information
to the brain about the visible environment. Similarly, airborne
molecules activate chemoreceptors in the nose that signal about
odors
what is Perception?
the psychological process of
organizing and interpreting sensory input
Infants’ sensory organs enable them to detect
and discriminate among the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and
touches of their environments. Infants then organize and interpret
sensory information in the process of perception.
what are two early theories
- Gestalt theory of perception
- Ecological theory of perception
what is gestalts theory of perseception?
principles or laws of human perception that describe humans spontaneous and natural organziation of visual stimuli into meaningful patters such as perceiving objects as whole
what is the ecolgical theroy of perception?
elenor and Jame gibson highligh the evolutionary foundations of perception and connections between perception and action
whats the perception-action feedback loop
refers to
the continuous cycle that connects perception and action as people
perceive, act, and adjust their actions in response to an everchanging
environment
A: baby looking, baby reahces
B: bay looking, reaches, touches, grasps and manipulates
(A) Depiction of a simple perceptionaction
feedback loop.
B) An example of a perception-feedback loop in which an infant looks
at a toy, reaches, touches, grasps, and manipulates the toy. The feedback from each step in
the sequence leads to new actions and alters the infant’s perceptions as what the baby
sees and touches continually changes.
whats an Affordances for Action
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
how do we test infants
- Preferential-looking tests
- Habituation-recovery tests
- Contingent reinforcement studies
what are Preferential Looking tests
(Fantz, 1960s):
– Present 2 stimuli, measure attention to both
– If infant pays more attention to one stimulus, that means…
she or he:
* Notices the difference
* “Prefers” one stimulus over the other
what are Habituation-Recovery tests
– Present 1 stimulus until infant becomes “bored”
– Present new stimulus
– If infant pays more attention to the new stimulus,
s/he:
* Notices the difference
involve presenting infants with a stimulus until they habituate or decrease their attention to the stimulus. When researchers then present infants with a new
stimulus, infant attention might recover or rebound to its initial level. Infants’ rebound of attention is thought to offer a window
how can we measure attention?
– Overt behaviour
– Physiological measures
what are Contingent-Reinforcement Studies
- 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
Researchers test whether
infants increase a specific behavior, such as sucking a pacifier or turning their head, in response to certain stimuli, such as hearing the
mother’s voice. Contingent reinforcement is sometimes used in conjunction with habituation-recovery to examine decreases and
then increases in the rewarded behavior. For example, an infant
might learn to suck on a pacifier to hear music. After some time, the infant habituates to the music and the sucking subsides. At that point, researchers introduce a new stimulus, such as the sound of birds chirping. Infants’ rebound in sucking indicates that they candiscriminate between the old and the new sounds.
whats Infant Vision?
- The most studied behavior in infant perception
- Vision is not simply seeing. It includes:
– actively looking
– tracking objects and people
– recognizing familiar, loved faces
whats Visual acuity
( the ability to see fine detail)
– How sharp is babies’ vision?
explain the time line of The Development of Acuity
- Newborns: 20/600
- Legally blind!
-They can see objects
about a foot away best - By 6 months: 20/100
- By 12 months: 20/50
- By 6 years: 20/20 (adult
level)
whats Tracking motion
neworns moving thier head in respionse to moving stimuli
- Jerky eye movements until 2 months of age, with further
development through 4 or 5 months
– Anticipatory eye movements: 6 months - Facilitates social interactions
whats contrast sensitivity
the minimum
difference in brightness between an image and its background that
infants can perceive
whats Good continuation:
A Gestalt principle of organization that claims a
natural tendency for individuals to view objects or
stimuli as continuous or whole
- Gestalt psychologists asserted that infants, like adults, perceive a
coherent visual world, and so will infer for example, that two pieces
of a rod sticking out from either end of a box in front of the rod form
a single rod. That’s because infants perceive an object as whole when
part of the object is occluded (hidden) by another object, what is
referred to as good continuation.
