Perception

Question 1

What is Sensation?

Answer 1

the way that information about the environment is picked up by sensory receptors and transmitted to the brain

Question 2

What are the 6 senses?

Answer 2

sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch and proprioception (tells baby the location of his body in relation to himself)

Question 3

What is perception?

Answer 3

the interpretation by the brain of this sensory input

• This is how we gain an understanding about the events, objects and people around us.

Question 4

Are babies born with certain perceptual capacities or must they acquire these through learning?

Answer 4

• Debate of nature – nurture has a long history
• Some argue baby is a ‘blank piece of paper’ (James, 1890)
• Others argue perceptual abilities are present at birth
• Some argue that the infant actively tries to create order and organise his perceptual world.

Question 5

Who said babies are blank piece of paper?

Answer 5

James, 1890

Question 6

Experimenting on babies is difficult, how do they do it?

Answer 6

what they know has to be inferred by their behaviour

• researchers need to invent ingenious techniques to measure the babies abilities
• then they need to conclude what the baby perceives by reasoning from evidence (i.e. they deduce).

Question 7

What different ways are there to experiment on babies?

Answer 7

• We can measure things the baby can do to see how/ if these change
Also, we can use what we know about babies
• They show preference – a baby will look at something
it prefers for longer
• They experience habituation – a baby will lose interest in something it is shown for a long time, but will show interest in something new
• They can be conditioned – a baby will learn to carry out a behaviour if the behaviour is reinforced (i.e. they will repeat the behaviour again)

Question 8

What are babies visual perceptions like?

Answer 8

Their vision is functional and effective but the quality of vision in first few weeks and months is limited – it develops rapidly.

Question 9

How is an infants visual perception different to an adults?

Answer 9

Infants:

1. Detect limited colours
2. Are poorer at detecting detail so the world is fussy and blurred
3. Cannot track an object smoothly and are less effective at scanning a whole object

Question 10

What visual perception tests are there?

Answer 10

Visual acuity test- black and white lines

Visual scanning

Question 11

What early preferences do babies have?

Answer 11

• Fantz (1961) found they preferred patterns rather than plain
• Fantz and Miranga (1975) found they have a preference for patterns with curved rather than straight edges

Question 12

What did Fantz 1961 find in a study of face recognition and preference?

Answer 12

• Fantz (1961) – showed 1 -15 week infants 3 stimuli based on a face
• Found that they had a preference for the face and scrambled face over the plain, and a slight preference for the face over the scrambled face

Question 13

What did Maurer and Barrera (1981) find in a similar study to Fantz?

Answer 13

used stimuli that all had the same facial features and same complexity
Found 1 month old no difference,
but 2 month old preferred real face
• Lots of research since concludes newborns have a face preference – especially for moving faces
• Can distinguish mother’s face at the very early age of 1 – 4 days – Walton et al (1992)
This could be useful for a babies survival because if a stranger approached them they would cry and alert their mother to their danger

Question 14

What is depth perception?

Answer 14

to explore if experience matters

Question 15

How was depth perception first researched?

Answer 15

First done with a ‘visual cliff’
- 6 to 14 mth olds
- none would crawl over
(Gibson and Walk, 1960)

Question 16

How did Schwartz et el develop the visual cliff study?

Answer 16

Schwartz et al (1973) monitored heart rate on each side of the ‘cliff’
- heart rate would increase if surprised or frightened, decrease if concentrating
- 9 mth olds heart rate increased on ‘deep’ side
- 5 mth olds heart rate decreased
Concluded that younger baby did not know they were over a ‘drop’
Indicates that experience or age is important to developing depth perception

Question 17

What is Proprioception?

Answer 17

• Proprioception is one of the lesser known senses.
• It is the sense that lets you know where you are in space.
• This is needed so we, for example, can
• not bump into things
• turn around and back into a chair without falling over.
• Also contributes to
• coordination (e.g. which arm/ leg and how far)
• timing
• speed of movements
• grading the pressure of your movements
• Children with these difficulties often seem clumsy and fiddly.

Question 18

How can proprioception be improved?

Answer 18

• Let child play with a variety of toys: balls to roll, rolling cars, tummy time on a mat, pushing a “grocery cart”
• Let child play in a variety of positions: tummy time, sitting, rolling, & standing while on the floor; climbing on the furniture and crawling under or over items.
• Let child play in a variety of locations: inside different rooms of the home, outdoors: garden, park, swimming pool, etc.
• Play animal walks: bear crawl (AKA ‘downward dog’ in the yoga), donkey kicks, slithering snakes on the belly, crabwalk, and any other pose that requires that the child hold his body weight with his muscles

Question 19

What difficulties associated with poor proprioception?

Answer 19

Often not actually diagnosed as something but child learns to cope through finding strategies that help.
Diagnosis could lead to a label of Dyspraxia or Sensory Processing Disorder and some specific intervention.