Q2 Notes Flashcards
origins of perception (empiricism vs. nativism)
empiricism - william james, blank slate, “a blooming, buzzing confusion”
nativism: baby begins with a confident and coherent sense of the world
paired preference
measuring perceptual development
infants will spend more time looking at the image they prefer, scientists focused on what the infants can see that makes them more interested in something
procedure - sit a child in front of two images that differ in 2D, measure how long the baby looks at each image during a trial, trying to determine if they have a preference for one, if they do have a preference - means they can discriminate between the two
if the infant doesn’t show a preference for a certain image - one can not say that the child can not discriminate between the two, the child may just not really care
*result only meaningful with a positive result(if they have a preference, infants can distinguish between the two images)
*infants prefer high contrast, more complexity, curved lines, and symmetry
vision
least developed perceptual system
- weak eye muscles, sparse receptors in the fovea, and incomplete neural development(poor myelination)
- very nearsighted at birth(considered legally blind if an adult had their eyesight)
most acuity improves in the first 6 months, and then continues to improve until 3 years old
cataracts
a cloudy build-up in the eye that prevents light from entering the eye, surgery must be done in the first months of life for a child to have normal visual acuity
- critical period: age window in which a specific type of input or experience is necessary for development to proceed normally - children need this light input in the first few months of life that cataracts can block
color (vision)
newborns detect red, yellow, and green
differentiate between all colors by 3 months
object perception
how do infants tell objects apart that are all put together/in the same area?
spatio-temporal cues
- spatial separation
- common fate
similarity cues
familiarity
spatio-temporal cues
spatial separation
common fate
spatial separation
study: show two sets of blocks in two trials, the first set has blocks separated and the second set has no gaps between; the first trial is the surprise where a hand pulls both sets and they both come along(infants look the longest - most surprising to them); the other trial, the hand pulls, but the blocks separate(possible, known event)
surprise paradigm: see a possible event and impossible event(inconsistent with their understanding) - testing if infants understand if a spatial separation means that it is two different objects
common fate
all of the visible aspects of an object are susceptible to a common fate - one object is going to do the same thing
study: showed a green rod partially hidden by an includer, moved green rod back and forth behind the includer
- First trial: infants look for a long time(about 45 seconds)
- Second trial: infants look for less time(about 30 seconds)
- Third + fourth trial: looking decreases a lot, infants have already processed fully
- Then show babies two options: no includer, two rods with separation in between, or a full rod
- Would look most at the two rods with separation, interpreting before that it was a whole rod behind the includer so they were most surprised by the two-rod pieces without the includer(they were expecting just one, full rod)
- Expected the two green pieces to be a part of the same object because they were moving together(common fate)
similarity cues
continuity of color
continuity of texture
piaget’s constructivism
intrinsically motivated construction of knowledge through active exploration of the environment
- children acting like scientists in their environment to determine the cause
- child = primary driver/active participant
object permeance
objects are stable and permanent in the environment
simple retrieval of hidden objects by 9 months(not born with this, born with the idea that objects are transitory, constrained by motor skill development)
(other explanations for the failure of simple retrieval - problems with executive functioning, if their toy is covered, they have to move their blanket away and then get their toy - complex movements that make them go farther away from their goal to then reach their goal)
Piaget believed children must learn object permanence through experience - moving objects in and out of the visual field to determine if they are still there - must have motor skills
object permeance introduced the A not B error
A not B error
A not B error: children have success in simple retrieval, children are able to find the object under one hiding spot, but when the hiding spot is changed, they will still go to the original hiding spot until 12 months
reasons for failure: some children look/reach for B, but still end up grabbing A - problem of inhibition - know where the object is but because of the structure of this task, they have the child reaching to the A location several times, so they have this trained motor response that has been previously rewarded with the toy
Baillargeon study
surprise paradigm
habituation phase - infant saw a panel rotating away from them, got bored after a little bit
possible event - panel hits an object, stops, and then comes back to the infant
impossible event - panel hits an object behind, but the object is removed through a trapdoor, making it look like the box disappeared
- if infants understand object permanence, they will look longer at the impossible event
- shows infants understand object permeance at 4 months in this study(much earlier than Piaget)
Piaget vs. Baillargeon
Baillargeon: studying core understanding, stripping away any other task demands, nativism, found object permeance at 4 months
Piaget: studying how infants can apply this task in the real world, found object permeance at 9 months
gravity study
Surprise paradigm
- Possible event: putting one block down on another
- Impossible event: putting a block down onto air and it stays, infants look longer
- 3 months old understand that there needs to be contact to give support so something doesn’t fall, but they don’t know anything about that contact - it could be contact on just the side that would still make it fall, but they don’t find this surprising
- 5 months understand that vertical contact is needed
- 65 months pay attention to amount of vertical contact/distribution of weight
- After this, then identified importance of the shape of the box
Can do teaching events:
Have box-stay events where they reinforce what they know, but then have box-fail events where they see things that don’t currently fit what they understand about the world
Box-fail events will then understand move than those who saw the box-stay events
learning mechanisms
assimilation and accomodation
children want equilibrium between knowledge and reality, driven to find equilibrium when in disequilibrium
Young children are able to make inferences about causality, even when they don’t understand the mechanism
- Object A will activate the detector to play music, but Object B won’t activate it, but if you put A+B at the same time, the detector activates
- Then, ask the child to make the music stop by taking one block off - need to track causal relationships from prior
Children are motivated to figure it out - will be more interested in playing with objects that behave in more impossible/magical ways rather than toys act in ways that are consistent with their ideas of the world
assimilation
add in information that is new that they learned about their reality
seeing a great dane and seeing how they are similar to their dog - what they expect of a dog
accommodation
rethinking due to something not fitting in what they expected, having an understanding of the world, but encounter knowledge that doesn’t fit their understanding, so having to go back and revise their understanding
ex - going to the park and trying to pet a bunny thinking it is a dog, but it runs away and doesn’t bark, so the bunny doesn’t fit in what seems to be a dog, so the child must rethink their idea of a dog
causality study(nativist perspective)
nativist study(born with some sense of causality - not fully formed):
- Direct launch: throw one ball to hit another and it moves(cause and effect with synchrony in space and time - spatiotemporal), normal causal event
- Collision-free launch: first ball moved towards the other and the other one launched but they never touched, so there is temporal continuity, but not spatial continuity
- Delayed launch: they hit each other, but the launch is later, so spatial continuity but no temporal continuity
Infants treated the collision-free launch and delayed launch as basically the same compared to the direct launch
See this difference as young as 2 days old - the nativist perspective makes the most sense
infant memory(proven short-term memory/long-term memory)
Proven short-term memory: object permanence and habituation
Proven long-term memory: cat and the hat story where they were read to in the womb and then after they were born
conjugate reinforcement paradigm
Train the baby to kick to make a mobile move by tying a ribbon to their leg - measure with a conducer to see how much they baby kicks
Take the mobile away for certain amounts of time and then bring the baby back
The first step is the baby with just the ribbon tied to the conducer, not just the mobile to make sure they are making a cognitive effort to remember that the mobile should be moving - not just happening to be learning again
Testing implicit procedural memory
