Quiz 1 Flashcards
What does it mean to be a child?
- Dependent on adult caregiver (longest childhood among primates. Born earlier because large heads)
- Fundamentally about learning (children are adapted to learning because they are: curious, suggestible, like to imitate others, overestimate own abilities, malleable brains)
Children can only focus on learning if cared by an adult
Child development
Process of learning of perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities that allows an individual to grow from the dependence of infancy to the independence of adulthood
What do babies see?
From birth, babies can visually scan an environment and pause to look at stuff
Methods in infant research
- Preferential looking paradigm
- Habituation paradigm
Preferential looking paradigm
- Present the baby with 2 stimuli
- If the baby looks at one longer than the other it means that they can distinguish a difference + they like that one better
- Babies prefer things that are colourful, more complex, familiar
Habituation Paradigm
Takes advantage of babies’ preference for novelty
- Habituation phase: repeatedly present infant with stimulus until used to it
- Test: present old with new stimulus and see if they look at the new one more (called Dishabituation)
Familiarity vs Novelty
Prefer familiarity in general, but to a certain extent
Short exposure = familiarity
Long exposure = novelty
Familiarization (preferred) is very brief compared to habituation (bored)
Visual acuity
Assess sharpness of visual discrimination
- Use preferential looking paradigm with boards of different stripes width against plains grey board.
Poor visual acuity at birth (very blurry). Start to have acuity 8-10cm away from the face (mom’s face when breastfeeding).
This is due to the immaturity of cone cells
Becomes normal at 8months old.
Colour perception
Black and white at birth
Colour vision appears at 2 months old
Adult vision at 5 months old (can differentiate diff shades of same colour during habituation phase)
Visual scanning
At birth, trouble tracking moving stimuli because eye movements are jerky
4 months old, can track slowly moving objects
8 months old, adult like visual scanning
Face perception
Infants have preference for face-like stimuli
Preference for top-heavy stimuli versus bottom heavy
ie. Preferred top heavy scrambled over bottom heavy, and over regular face. Means that they just prefer top-heavy, not just face-like
Children prefer their mom’s face to others just a few days after birth
Face specialist
6 months old can distinguish both human and monkey faces better than adults (generalists)
9months old start being better at human faces only (specialist)
This is caused by synaptic pruning (perceptual narrowing). Synaptogenesis = too many. Synaptic pruning = reduces.
Other-race effect (ORE)
Easier to distinguish faces from our own race.
Tested with habituation test in infants:
- 3 months old: distinguish equally between all of them
- 9 months old: only for own race
This is an exposure effect (not innate). Means that infant will not show ORE if equally presented with all races
Face perception in children with ASD
People with ASD often have difficulty with face perception
Toddlers prefer looking at geometric shapes than faces (opposite to normal kids)
Perceptual constancy
Perception of objects as being constant in size and shape in spite physical differences in retinal image
ie. Show infants cube repeatedly at diff distances. They looked longer at the larger and further away cubes meaning that they noticed the difference in size with original small cube.
Perceptual constancy is present at birth.