Perception & Self Awareness: Infancy Flashcards
Perception:
Processes by which the brain receives, selects, modifies and organises incoming nerve impulses that are the results of physical stiulation.
Visual acuity:
Smallest pattern that one can distinguish reliably.
Cones:
Specialised neurons concentrated in the back of the eye along the retina.
Perceptual processing is used to?
Infer depth
Visual cliff:
Glass covered platform that appears to have a shallow and a deep side to study infants depth perception.
How do infants infer depth?
Use several kinds of cues, Kinetic, pictorial.
Kinetic cuesL
Motion is used to estimate depth.
Visual expansion:
as an object moves closer, it fills an ever-greater proportion of the retina.
Motion parallax:
nearby moving objects move across our visual field faster than those at a distance.
Retinal disparity:
The left and right eyes often see slightly different versions of the same scene.
Pictorial Cues:
Cues that depend on the arrangement of objects in the environent.
Linear perspective:
Parrallel lines come together at a single point in the distance.
Texture gradient:
The texture of objects changes from coarse and distinct for nearby objects to finer and less distinct for distant objects.
What do perceptual processess enable us to do?
To interpret patterns of lines, textures and colours as objects.
Newborn preference for perceiving faces:
- faces with standard features
- Upright faces
- Attractive faces
Intersensory redundancy:
Infants sensory systems are attuned to information presented simultaneously to different sensory modes.
Theory of mind:
Ideas about connections between thughts, beliefs, intentions and behaviour that create an intuitive understanding of the link between mind and behaviour.
Earliest phase of ToM:
People can have different desires.
2nd phase of ToM:
People can have different beliefs.
3rd phase of ToM:
Different experiences can lead to different states of knowledge.
4th phase of ToM:
Children understand that behaviour is based on a persons beliefs about events and situations, even when those beliefs are wrong.
