Perceptual development Flashcards
What are four basic methods used by researchers to investigate perception in infants
Preferential looking
Habituation
Visual scanning
Cortical evoked potentials
What is an implication of preferential looking?
If the baby prefers one stimuli over another, it means that he can discriminate between them
What do babies prefer to look at over other stimuli?
Faces
What is the contrast sensitivity function
ii. Gray background with darker and lighter lines that start close together, but progressively widen
What is a prediction of habituation in regards to new stimuli when one has already been habituated
If the infant can discriminate the habituated stimulus from the novel, the decrease in response should not generalize to the new stimulus
What is an assumption made in habituation
The baby prefers the novel stimulus to the habituated stimulus
How is development level determined using visual scanning
As age increases, the eye movements become more precise and take in more parts of the picture
What are cortical evoked potentials?
An evoked potential or evoked response is an electrical potential recorded from the nervous system of a human or other animal following presentation of a stimulus
What is the first external stimulus babies have a reflex reaction to?
touch
Define haptic perception
The perceptual experience that results from active exploration of objects by touch
Define visual acuity
The clarity with which images can be perceived
What is vision like at birth
20/400 - 20/800
When can babies full discern colour
4 months
At what age will the visual cliff scare kids to the point they will not cross?
9 months
What kind of faces do babies show preference for?
symmetric, “attractive” faces
Define prospagnosia
Inability to remember faces
What are two evidences of innate mechanisms in face perception
- damage to certain parts of the brain can cause prospopagnosia
- Monkeys deprived of monkey and juman faces for the first 24 months of life are still able to discern faces
Evidence that experience plays a role in face processing (2)
monkeys selectively exposed to human faces preferred human faces, and were better able to discriminate between human faces
What is the other race effect
Struggles distinguishing between different faces of a racial culture in which one was not raised
What are two different types of relational processing
Configural and hollistic
Define configural processing
Taking several different features of the face and establishing a relationship between them in order to determine who the person is, or what sex they are.
Define holistic processing
i) a quick initial response to the first-order information present in every face.
ii) Seeing just the face as a whole (recognizing someones face)
Define intermodal perception
a. The use and integration of information from more than one modality to form a unitary representation of an object
What is an example of intermodal perception being wrong?
The McGurk effect
Define intentional behaviour
Ability to separate means from ends