Perceptual Development (Cognitive) Flashcards
What is perception?
This is the process by which our minds organise, process and make sense of sensory data.
What is depth perception?
The visual ability to perceive the world in 3D, coupled with the ability to gauge how far away an object is.
Why is monocular vision poor at depth perception? and why is binocular vision better?
When an image is projected onto a single retina, cues bout relative size of the object compared to other objects are obtained.
In binocular vision, these relative sizes are compared, since each individual eye is seeing a slightly different image from a different angle.
What is acuity?
The sharpness of our vision, the ability to define detail. It is determined by how quickly our eye muscles are able to contract and relax to focus.
What is binocular vision?
Eyes have to be aligned and coordinated in their movements in order to achieve accurate depth perception.
What is the background research for this topic?
Fantz (1950)
Spalding (1873)
Lashley (1934)
Outline reserach by Fantz (1963)
Found that babies prefer complex patterns, babies can differential between patterns.
New-born babies preferred patterns that resembled the human face, suggesting an innate ability to recognise the human face,
Outline research by Spalding (1873)
Spalding kept chicks in a black sack.
They were in the bag when they hatched. When he released them several days later, they could run to their mother, avoiding obstacles, implying that they had the innate skill to identify where objects were and how to avoid them.
Outline research by Lashley (1934)
Rats were kept them in the dark for 3 months, when tested they used more effort to jump large gaps than small gaps, implying that they knew when something was further away.
After 300 days lost ability
What was the aim of research by Gibson and Walk?
To show both humans’ and other species’ depth perception is innate.
What was the research method?
Laboratory experiment
Repeated measures designbecause the infant was called from both the cliff side and the shallow side of the apparatus.
The studies using other species are quasi-experiments.
What was the IV?
whether the infant was called by its mother from the cliff side or the shallow side (of the visual cliffapparatus).
What was the DV?
whether or not the child would crawl to its mother.
What sample was used?
36 infants ranging for 6-14 months.
Unspecified number of a variety of animal species e.g. cats, rats, goats, sheep, turtles and chickens.
What controls were used to increase validity?
Reflections from the glass were eliminated.
In some experiments the pattern surface was replaced with plain grey.
To determine whether depth perception in rats and kittens is innate, groups of light-reared and dark-reared
