perceptual and motor development Flashcards
habituation
o Paying less attention as something becomes familiar
o Babies have preferences for some things novel over familiar things
o Measure excitement though their actions
o Show 2 pictures → 1 for a while, they get bored → show a diff picture that looks very different and they can tell you will get a response
• Looks same = no response
visual preference
o What captures the baby’s attention
o Picture or drawing: more likely to look at something new
o How long they look at something
conditioned sucking or head turn
o What appears diff or same for babies?
o Give something to such that is connected to sound generating system
o Get baseline
o If they like the sound that is played they will suck more if they realize that their sucking is related to music playing
• New sound → will suck until they get bored so they suck softer
smell taste and touch
- Newborns can smell, taste and feel
- Useful in recognizing parents and feeding
- Grimace, frown, turn away from tastes and smells they don’t like
- Turn towards what they like and show preference (ex. moms breast milk)
- Differentiate between salt, sour, bitter, sweet
- Infants feel pain
- Can tell difference between moms touch, dads touch, unfamiliar touches
hearing
- Auditory threshold: the quietest sound a person can hear
- Babies hear well but not as well as adults
- Babies hear human speech pitches → if sound is too low or too high they cant hear
- Early sensitivity to music
- At 4mo can recognize their own name
- Hearing impairment → caused by heredity or disease
o Early hearing loss in family history → get hearing checked bc you don’t want language development problems
seeing
- Visual acuity: the smallest pattern that can be dependently distinguished
- Acuity improves rapidly from 1mo to 1yr
- Until 6mo vision is 20/240
- 2-3 weeks start to notice and prefer patterns
o Must be large to be able to tell the difference - See world in more colour after 1st yr
- Cone neurons designed to perceive colour wavelengths on retina
o By 3 or 4mo colour perception is like adults
perception
- How is sensory info combined or interpreted
- Must learn to integrate across modalities
- Patterns are meaningful
- Sensory info is organizes
integrating sensory info
- Like a multimedia event
- Perceive many of the relations between sensory systems
- Once integrated → recognize when they only get once sense (not a sum of its parts)
o Ex. recognize visually an object they have only previously touched - Integrate movement, rhythm and music → feel the beat
- Detect relations between visual and auditory info
perceiving objects
- Infants master perceptual constancies early
- Motion, colour, texture, and aligned edges are used to perceive objects
- By 4mo have size, shape, brightness and colour constancy
- Many cues used for depth
depth perception
- Glass on top, pattern on top of class on half and pattern below glass on other half
- Babies that aren’t crawling well are less hesitant to go over the ledge
- Once they can crawl they can tell the difference in the depth
- # Of cueso Kinesthetic cues
o Visual expansion: as objects move closer they take up a greater proportion of retina
o Motion parallax: objects closer move faster through visual field than ones further
o Retinal disparity: right and left eye see slightly different version of the same thing → less disparity for far away objects
perceiving faces
- Like to look at faces
- By 3 months look at features of face instead of general shate
motor development
- Perceptual processes closely linked to motor skills → coordinated movements of muscles and limbs
- Perception guides movement as when vision used to avoid obstacles
o Movement changes based on what we see - More you’re able to move the more variety of perceptions (see, hear, touch)
- Babies like a variety of experiences
- Movement in the environment provides variety in perceptual stimulation
locomotion
- Crawling, walking, etc.
- Dynamic systems theory
o Motor development: involves many distinct skills, must learn all and then they can move
learning to walk
- Posture and balance → balance changes depending on position of the head
- Stepping → moving of the legs, alternation, weight shifting
- Environmental cues → prefer flat surfaces, must learn that its easier,
- Coordination → how do put all skills together
- In first few months too top heavy to sit up
- Differentiation = mastering of all skills
- Integration = coherent way of putting all together
cultural influences
- Practices which enhance or limit opportunities for practice can limit or delay motor development
- Babies massaged or stretched → walk earlier
- Carried around a lot → walk later
- Babies crawl later in NA and EU because of the back to sleep thing
o Encouraged for babies to have tummy time to practice skills
