Perception, Action, & Learning in Infancy Flashcards
WEIRD
Psychology is western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic
Sensation
detection and processing of basic information from the external world by receptors in the sense organs and brain
Perception
organizing and interpreting sensory information about the objects, events, and spatial layout of the world
Preferential Looking Technique
Two different visual stimuli displayed side by side
If infant looks longer at one stimulus, can infer that:
-Baby can discriminate between the two stimuli
-Infant prefers one over the other
Eye trackers used
Habituation
Repeatedly presenting an infant with a particular stimulus until the infant habituates (response declines)
Present novel stimulus
If infant dishabituated (response increases) in response to novel stimulus, can infer that baby can discriminate between the old and new stimuli
Reveals that learning has taken place
Speed of habituation related to general cognitive ability, efficiency of info processing
Visual Acuity
How sharply or clearly infants can see
Show varying patterns to see which infants prefer
E.g. infants prefer to look at patterns with high visual contrast
Contrast Sensitivity
detect a pattern only when it is composed of highly contrasting elements
Infants have poor contrast sensitivity at first
Cone Cells
light sensitive neuron highly concentrated in fovea
Involved in seeing fine detail and colour
Infants have immature cones, little evidence of colour perception
Colour Vision At 2 Months
can tell difference between white and colour
Prefer colours that are unique hues over colours that combine hues
Infants brains represent colour categories prior to learning labels for colours
Have colour vision identical to adults
Colour Vision at 5 Months
Evidence of categorical discrimination
Brain responds differently to shifts between categories (green to blue)
Not within category (two shades of blue)
Visual Scanning
Newborns start scanning the environment right away
Especially attracted to moving stimuli
Have trouble tracking moving stimuli because eye movements are jerky
One way to have control over what they observe
Visual Scanning at 1 Month
Attending to edges and contours of faces
Because of poor contrast sensitivity
Prefer looking at black circle with white center
Visual Scanning at 2 Months
Attending to finer details of face
More complex scanning
Prefer to look at circle with smiley face in the middle
Visual Scanning at 4 Months
Can track slow moving objects smoothly
Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements
Viewers gaze shifts at the same speed and angle as a moving object to keep it in view
Function of maturation and neurological development
Preterm infants develop this skill later than full term infants
Infant Face Perception
From birth children are drawn to facelike shapes as long as shown right side up
Newborns see faces most often, but decreases over time
Sensitive to configuration of features
Children prefer upright faces, and top heavy faces
Newborns recognize and prefer caregivers’ faces
Develop preference for faces depicting gender of caregiver they see most
Face Perception 3 Months
Vision no longer guided by looking for the ‘top heavy’ image
Perceptual Narrowing For Face Perception
Infants become face specialists
Better at discriminating among kinds of faces frequently seen in their environment
Adults, 9M, and 6M can discriminate between two human faces
Only 6M can discriminate between two monkey faces
Other Race Effect (ORE)
Easier to distinguish between faces of individuals from our own racial group than from other racial groups
Emerges in infancy
Newborns show no preference
3M infants prefer faces from their own race
9M more difficulty discriminating between other race faces
Facial scanning of biracial infants are better
Face Perception & Autism
Infant preferences for non faces (in particular geometric shapes)
Look at faces in videos of naturalistic interactions ½ as often as typical toddlers
Infants with less interest in faces may have fewer opportunities to learn about the type of info carried by faces (e.g. speech sounds and social cues)
Face Perception 4 Months
Focus particularly on eyes of talking face
After begin babbling focus on speaker’s mouth
Bilingual infants show preference for mouth of speaker sooner than monolinguals (and pay more attention to mouth)
Perceptual Constancy
Perceive a constant shape and size even when stimuli are moving
Newborns recognize size changes with distance (innate understanding)
Object Segregation
Perception of the boundaries between objects
Independent motion of an object as a signal it is independent
Look longer at the broken rod hidden behind cube because assume that the rod is whole until the cube is removed
Object Segregation at 8 Months
Surprised when objects of different textures are attached
Surprised when objects that look like are attached are not
Common Movement
Segments move together in same direction with same speed
Leads to the assumption that the objects are one
This ability emerges at 2M
Object Knowledge
Infants still reach for objects in the dark (shows understanding that objects still exist when they can’t see them)
If shown an attractive toy and the turn the lights off, infants reach to where they last saw the toy
Object Knowledge at 6 Months
Hear sound of large familiar object reach out with both hands in the dark
Hear sound of small familiar object reach out with only one hand
Demonstrates they can think about the size of an invisible object
Violation of Expectancy
If infants observe event that is inconsistent with what they know, they will be surprised or interested
Unexpected events should evoke a greater response
Screen shown either stopping when blocked by a box or passing through the box
3½M looked longer on impossible trials
Depth Perception
Infants show early sensitivity to variety of depth and distance cues
Need to interpret a 2D retinal image as a 3D representation of the world
Optical Expansion
Visual image of an object increases in size as it comes toward us, occluding more and more of the background
1M: infants blink defensively at expanding image that appears to be an object heading toward them
Preterm infants show delayed pattern of blinks to incoming objects
Brain maturation crucial for this milestone
Binocular Disparity
Eyes never send exactly the same signal to the brain
Closer objects have greater disparity
Stereopsis: visual cortex computes degree of disparity between the eyes neural signals and produces the perception of depth
Emerges around 4M, complete within a few weeks
Experience expectant (don’t develop if deprived of input)
Strabismus
Two eyes do not line up in the same direction
If not treated, at risk for pervasive challenges with binocular vision
Monocular Depth Cues
ues which require only one eye
Pictorial cues: another word for it, because can be used to portray depth in pictures
6 or 7 months
Use relative size, interposition, texture gradient
Grasp at 2D images less than 3D
By 19M no longer manually investigate pictures
Auditory Localization
Perception of the spatial location of a sound source
When newborns hear a sound they turn toward it
But they are worse at determining the location than infants/toddlers
Binaural disparity harder because head is smaller so difference in sound arrival time is smaller
Music Perception
Music perception in infants is surprisingly adultlike
Most caregivers around the world sing to their infants
Infants prefer infant directed singing over adult directed and more than infant directed speech
Preference for consonant intervals over dissonant ones
-Seen in children of deaf parents or in households without music exposure
Only infants notice both the changes within the key of a melody and outside of the key of the melody (perceptual narrowing)
Infants do better at detecting changes to complex rhythms
Taste & Smell
Early exposure to bitter flavours before 6M increases later likelihood of preference for those flavours
Timing of exposure also changes the effects on children’s preferences
Food neophobia: children avoid unfamiliar food
Differences in reactions to smells can explain food neophobia
Degree of reactivity to food odours and not tastes predicted degree of food neophobia
Touch
Infants learn about their environment through active touch
From 4M infants gain better control over hand and arm movements
Manual exploration increases and takes precedence over oral exploration
E.g. bang, rub, probe objects
Actions become more specific to properties of the object
Intermodal Perception
Combining of information from two or more sensory systems into one cohesive perceptual experience
Infants integrate info from different senses
Intermodal Perception at 4 Months
Can integrate visual and auditory information
Infants attend to the video with the wooden soundmaker when hear wood
Infants attend to video of adult speaking when hear peek a boo
Babies orient attention to ball that matches whistle speed
McGurk Effect
Present sound of someone saying Da and showed footage of someone saying Ba
Babies habituated to the Ba sound even though they were hearing Da
Reflexes
Tightly organized patterns of action
Some have clear adaptive value and others have no known adaptive significance
Reaching
Once infants can reach and grasp objects they don’t have to wait for the world to come to them
Reaching takes a long time to develop
Pre-reaching movements: clumsy swiping in general vicinity of objects
3-4 months they begin successfully reaching for objects (poor control, often fail)
-giving velcro toy mitts increases interest in objects due to easier reaching/grabbing
7 months: smooth reaching and stable sitting
Self Locomotion
Moving around in the environment on their own
Infants remarkably good at findings ways to get around prior to being able to walk
Development of Self Locomotion
8 months: children capable of self locomotion
11-12 months: begin walking independently, keep feet wide apart, flex at hip and knee to lower center of gravity
Scale Errors
Try to do something with a miniature replica object that is far too small for the action to be possible
E.g. sit in small dollhouse sized chair or get into small toy car
Statistical Learning
Detecting and learning from statistical patterns in one’s environment
Newborns track statistical regularities in domains of music, action, speech
Seeing a novel pairing caused longer looking times
-2 months look more at novel shapes
Infants listening to long sequence of syllables
-Variable syllable pairings were listened to for longer
Mechanism available at birth or even before
Critical for language learning
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov
Infant sucking motions begin as soon as a bottle is present
Unconditioned stimulus (nipple in infant’s mouth)
Unconditioned response (sucking reflex)
Conditioned stimulus (breast or bottle)
Conditioned stimulus occurs repeatedly just before the unconditioned stimulus, eventually the behaviour becomes a conditioned response
Instrumental Conditioning
Learning relationship between a behaviour and its consequences
Positive reinforcement: reward that reliably follows a behaviour and increases likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated
Tie ribbon to infant leg and attach other end to mobile
3 months: remember the kicking response for ~1 week
6 months: ~2 weeks
Younger than 6 months only remember when test mobile is identical to training mobile
Older infants remember it even with novel mobiles
Observational Learning/Imitation
Observing other people’s behaviours is a huge source of learning for infants
Imitation is a form of observational learning
From 6-9 months after 24hr delay
14M imitate after week long delay
In second half of first year infants begin to imitate complex actions (e.g. copy experimenter does something weird with an object and infant later copies)
Rational Learning
integrating the learner’s prior beliefs and biases with what actually occurs in the environment
Ability to use prior experiences to predict what will occur in the future
Violation of Expectancy
Show different outcomes and measure looking times
Unexpected outcomes = longer looking times
Evidence the child has a prior belief that didn’t pan out
E.g. Infants looking at experimenter drawing balls from 70 red and 5 white bin (8 months)
Look longer at display with 4 white balls (unexpected outcome)
Made statistical inference that guided predictions of the event
Active Learning
infants learn by acting on the world (piaget)
Infants learn more about an object when they have chosen themselves to explore it
Active engagement therefore facilitates learning
Memory
Most adults report little or no memory of experiences during infancy and early childhood
Memory systems must be present in order for learning to occur
Infants shown crackers being put into buckets crawl towards buckets with more crackers
