Seeing, Thinking, Doing in infancy (CH 5) Flashcards
What are the 4 domains of development?
- Cognition
- Perception
- Action
- Learning
What are the enduring themes?
- Active child
- Continuity/ discontinuity (relation of behavior to subsequent development)
- Mechanisms of change (Variability & selection)
- Socio-Cultural
- Nature & nurture
What is Sensation?
-Processing of basic info from external world by sensory receptors in our sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc)
What is Perception?
-Process of organizing & interpreting sensory info about objects, events, & spatial layout of the world
What is true about the vision of Newborns?
- They begin to explore visually= scanning, gazing
- Vision improves rapidly in their first few months
- Attracted to moving stimuli but have trouble tracking bc their eye movements are jerky
What are the 2 methods that are used to study sensory & perceptual development in infants?
- Preferential Looking Technique
- Habituation
What is Preferential Looking Technique?
- 2 different stimuli are presented side by side= baby can look at one longer= demonstrates that it can differentiate & that it has a preference
- Other ways is w/ eye movement trackers
- Enables researchers & eye care pros to assess Visual Acuity
What is Habituation?
- Another technique
- Involves presenting infant w/ stimulus until they don’t respond to it (Habituate)
- After they habituate, a novel stimuli is presented &; if they respond to it (Dishabituate) then it demonstrates that baby can discriminate between old & new stimuli
What is Visual Acuity?
- How clearly an infant can see
- Develops so rapidly that an 8 month old is at about the same level as adults
What is Contrast sensitivity?
-Ability to detect differences in light & dark areas in a visual pattern
What is true about infants &; their Contrast Sensitivity?
-They have weak contrast sensitivity because they can detect a pattern ONLY when it is composed of highly contrasting elements
Why do infants have poor Contrast Sensitivity?
- Immaturity of cone cells in infant’s retinas= light sensitive neurons are highly concentrated in Fovea but they’re cones are 4x further apart than adults so infants only catch 2% of light
- 1st month or so= don’t percieve differences between white & color (2 mos+ have similar color vision to adults)
How do infants respond to color?
- At 2 mos or so, they have similar color vision to adults
- Their brain respond to a change of one color in one category to a new color in another category
- Brain doesn’t respond to new color in same category
What is true about the visual scanning of a 4 month old?
-Able to track objects smoothly ONLY if they’re moving slowly
Why is early-developing aspect of perceptual development important?
- Can be an important predictor of later cognitive development
- Preterm infants (perceptual & neural systems are immature) develop smooth visual tracking later vs full term infants
Why is Visual Scanning so important for infants?
-It allows them to have active control over what they observe & learn
Why do infants prefer faces?
- Prominent aspect of their environment
- 1 mo old will scan perimeter vs a 2 mo old scanning the details of middle of face
What will infants begin to learn when they observe Talking Faces?
- Begin to draw connections between motor actions &; sound= basis of their native language
- When infants do start babbling they will fixate on the mouths of others more
- Bilingual infants will pay attention to the mouth earlier
What is Perceptual Constancy?
-The perception of objects being constant in size, shape, color, etc in spite of the physical differences in the retinal image of the object
What is Object Segregation?
-Perception of boundries between objects
How do infants use object movement as a cue for object segregation?
-Treating independent motion of one object that may be sitting on top of the other as a cue that they are separate entities
What is Common Movement?
- Cue that leads infants to perceive contrasting elements moving together as part of unitary object
- Works bc it draws their attention to relevant aspects of the scene
- Must be learned (2 mos= demonstrate the use of C.M)
How does culture affect the visual pattern of infants?
- Culture can influence attention to visual world
- Must be learned (parents & how they pay attention to other things/ mom’s in east asian countries are more likely to label actions= heightens saliency)
- Influence scene perception (white babies are likely to focus on objects & asian babies pay attention to actions/ background contexts)
What is Optical Expansion?
- When the visual image of an object increases in size as the object occludes (comes out) of background
- If an object expands symmetrically, then baby responds by blinking
What is true about defensive blinking?
- Infants at 1 mo blink defensively at expanding image that may hit them
- Brain maturation & postnatal visual experience is crucial for this development
What is Binocular Disparity?
- Since our eyes are spaced apart, the signal of the retinal image that is sent to our brains ARE NOT IDENTICAL
- The CLOSER the object, the GREATER disparity between signals
- The FURTHER the object the LESS disparity between signals
What is Stereopsis?
- The process where Visual Cortex combines the different neural signals from the retinal image from Binocular Disparity &; combining them to form depth perception
- Results of Experience-Expectant Plasticity
When is Stereopsis developed?
- Emerges at 4 mos
- Completes within a few weeks after that
What is Binocular Vision?
-Both eyes working together to compute depth cues &; other aspects of the visual scene
How is Stereopsis a form of Experience-Expectant Plasticity?
- Binocular vision is natural function of brain
- If infant is deprived of that normal visual input, then they will not develop binocular vision which will cause them to struggle with depth cues
What is Strabismus?
- Crossed eyes
- Disorder where 2 eyes don’t line up in same direction
- If not corrected before 3yrs old then they’re gonna struggle with binocular vision
At what age do kids become sensitive to Monocular Depth Cues?
6-7 mos
they use relative size as a cue to depth
What is Monocular Depth Cues?
- AKA Pictorial Depth Cues (Interposition=nearer objects occulude the ones further away & Convergence of Lines & Relative size)
- Denote depth when only one eye is open &; can be used to potray depth in pictures
What’s true about Auditory Perception in Infants?
- Theres hella improvements from outer &; middle ear to the inner ear over the course of their infancy
- At 1 yr is when the auditory pathways in brain mature significantly
What is Sound Localization/ (orienting response)?
- Perception of spatial localization of a sound source
- Infants will turn their heads in the direction that sound is coming from
- BUT newborns ARE TERRIBLE at determining the spatial location of sound vs older infants
Why are newborns so bad at determining the spatial location of a sound?
- Their heads are smol= differences in timing & loudness of info arriving at each ear is smaller
- Development of Auditory Map requires multimodal experiences which plays a role in integrating info that they hear w/ what they see &; touch
Since infants are so bad at determining the spatial location of sound, then what are they GOOD at?
- Detecting patterns in sound
- Can detect subtle differences in human speech
What are the 3 Cues that infants use for depth perception?
- Binocular Vision
- Stereopsis
- Monocular (Pictoral) vision
What is the EARLY preference for face perception?
- “Top Heavy patterns”
- Contrast &; shadow capture their attention
- Areas of contrast stimulate neurons= forming neural connections
What is the LATER preference for face perception?
- Influenced by meaning &; experience
- Preference for female faces over male @ 3 mos
- “Other race” effect is evident by 9 mos
What role does Perceptual Narrowing play in Facial Perception?
- Occurs later when infants go through specific experiences w/ faces in their enviornment
- More atuned to faces of their “own kind/race”
Why do infants prefer intant-directed singing vs singing that is directed to adults?
- Higher pitch= more positive effect
- Mothers smile more
What does it mean that infants prefer constant sounds over dissonant?
- Show’s as early as 2 day olds
- Preference is also evident in species
- Preference is UNRELATED to mucical experience
What makes infant so GOOD at music perception?
- They’re able to detect changes of notes within key AND out side of key vs just adults detecting different notes outside of key
- They’re sensitive to aspects of musical rhythm
What causes infants to be so GOOD at music perception?
-They’re more likely to lack implicit knowledge of western music= that Perceptual Narrowing hasn’t run its course yet
What role does Perceptual Narrowing play in musical perception in infants?
- W/ experience, they become more attuned to patterns in biological &; social stimuli in their enviornment
- So they “lose” their ability to detect changes in pitch unless their parents have musical abilities
What is Perceptual Narrowing?
-Developmental changes that leads younger learner to “lose” ability to make distinctions that they used to make at an earlier point in their development
What flavor shows in early preference?
-Sweet!
What role does Smell play?
- Helps w/ identifying mother
- 2 day old infants where more attracted to mother’s scent infused pad vs another womans
What is the purpose of infant touching things?
-To learn more about their enviornment
Why is Oral Exploration important?
- Infants learn more about their bodies as well as about texture, taste, & other properties of objects
- This mode of exploration dominants the first few months of life
How does the increased control of arm movement contribute to tactile development?
- at 4 mos they’re more able to manually explore
- They’ll rub, finger, probe, & bang objects together which will lead to actions becoming specific to the properties of objects
What is Intermodal Perception?
- Combining info from 2 or more sensory systems (seeing &; touching, hearing &; seeing etc)
- Facilitated by sensory experience
What kind of Intermodal Perceptions do infants show?
- Oral & visual experience
- Auditory- visual
What would be an example of Oral &; Visual intermodal perception?
-Looking at a picture the pacifier that they just sucked for longer
What would be an example of Auditory-Visual intermodal perception?
-Infant responding more to a video where the sound track that is being played independantly fits bc they detect common structure in in auditory & visual info
What happens at around 4 mos in terms of Auditory-Visual intermodal perception?
- They can draw more abstract connections between sight & sound= looking longer where the modalities are congruent
- EX; matching whistle sound pitch to ball rising & falling
What is Synesthesia & why would infants be more likely to experience it?
- Stimulus in one modality leads to a percept in another
- Infants are more likely to experience it bc the neural connections between brain areas aren’t pruned yet
What is the McGurk effect?
- Audio-Visual blending illusion
- Man mouths ga but audio says ba so we hear da becasue the D sound comes from a position in between the B & G sounds
- 4.5 mo olds experience hearing Da too
How is Perceptual Narrowing evident in Intermodal Perception?
-Younger infants can detect correspondances between speech sounds &; facial movements from unnative language/ speech sounds while older infants can’t
What are reflexes?
-Innate/ fixed patterns that occur in response to particular stimulation
What are the 6 types of neonate reflexes?
- Grasping
- Rooting (turning their head in the direction of touch)
- Sucking
- Swallowing
- Tonic neck (when arm that is on the same side as turned head is extended & the rest are flexed= maybe help keep their hand in view?)
- Stepping reflex (disappears as baby gains weight)
- REFLEXES ARE NOT AUTOMATIC
What is an indication of neurlogical problems interms of neonate relfexes?
- If they continue past the time that they are expected to disappear
- Reflexes that are unusually weak or unsually vigorous
How can culture influence Motor development?
- Some cultures encourage while others discourage locomotion
- The cultures that encourage locomotion located in safer areas
- Sub-Saharan Africa practice Motor exercises to strengthen babies muscles
- Babies walk better naked (without modern toiltery invention)
What do theorists emphasize about early motor development?
- Results from a confluence of different factors
- Factors include developing of neural mechs, strength, posture control, balance, perceptual skils, changes in body proportions &; overall motivation
What is the relationship between increased mobilty & development in other areas?
- Infants gain pleasure from pushing the envelope of their motor skills
- The wider the variety of movements that they’re able to do= the more they get to learn about the world &; interact w/ environment
- Results in advantage in Perceptual & Cognitive Development bc they’re better able to seek out new opportunities for stimulation
Why does Reaching take so long to develop?
- Bc it involves a complext interaction between multiple independent components
- Including muscle development, postural control, development of various perceptual & motor skills etc
What are Pre-Reaching Movements?
-Clumsy swiping of movements by young infants toward objects they see
What is so great about fully developing Reaching abilites?
- Infant will now be able to reach out &; grasp objects w/o aids
- Increased exploration
At what age do infants begin to sucessfully reach for stuff?
3-4 mos
-Intially jerky &; poorly controlled &; often fail to grab
At what age do infants sit independently &; what occurs?
- 7 mos
- Reaching becomes stable, smooth, &; straight
- They enlarge their sphere of action bc they have the ability to LEAN forward= helps w/ visual perception & have a sense to how long their arms are
What is the relationship between Sitting &; Visual Perception?
- Infants w/ better sitting &; manual skills= better at perceiving complete 3-D objects from a limited view
- Infatns can reach for things making noise in the dark
How does Reaching show signs of anticipation?
- When reaching towards a larger object they’ll open their fingers widely &; adjust hand for orientation of object
- Anticipate tradjectory of a ball/ object being thrown &; reaching for it
- At 10 mos, approach to an object depends on what they plan to do with it (reaching faster for an object that they plan to throw)
- BUT anticipation skills remain limited for a while
How does Reaching have a Social Component?
-Infants are more likely to reach for objects further away if any adult was there to help them
When do infants begin to show signs of Self-Locomotion?
- Around 8 mos
- Starts off as crawling or idiosyncratic ways of self-propulsion
What is it like begin walking independently?
- Feet are wide apart= increases their base of support
- Flex @ hip & knee= lowering center of gravity
- Keep hands in air=Facilitate balance
- Have both feet on the ground 60% of the time
How does walking change when they gain experience?
- Steps are longer, straighter, consistent
- Profiency in walking/ motor tasks is predicted by the number of days since they first began to engage in that behavior
What is the relationship between Locomotion & Perception?
- Babies won’t cross to the deep side of visual cliff
- Infants have to learn from experience how to integrate perceptual info w/ each new motor skill= gotta learn what they can & can’t do w/ respect to each new motor skill (what they learn in crawling doesn’t transfer to walking)
What are Scale Errors?
- Child treating minature objects like “life size” ones by sitting on tiny chairs, slides, etc
- Occurs bc they fail to integrate visual info represented in 2 different areas of the brain in the service of action
What are the 8 types of learning?
- Habituation
- Perceptual learning
- Statistical learning
- Classical conditioning
- Instrumental conditioning
- Observational learning/ imitation
- Rational learning
- Active learning
What is Habituation?
- Simplest form of learning= being able to recognize something that has experienced before
- The rate at which an infant habituates reflects general efficiency of their processing= babies who habituate faster tend to have higher IQs
What is Perceptual Learning?
- Paying close attention to objects they perceive
- The key process is Differentiation
- An important part is the infant’s discovery of Affordances
- Underlies process of perceptual narrowing
What is differentiation?
- Extracting relationships that remain constant from ever-changing environment
- This ability involved in the development of intermodal perception
What is Affordances?
-Possibilities for action offered or afforded by objects and situations (small objects afford the possibility of picking up
How do infants discover Affordances out?
-By figuring out the relations between their bodies and abilities and the things around them
(learning solid/ stable flat surfaces are best for walking)
What is Statistical learning?
- Involves picking up info from environment, specifically detecting statistically predictable patterns
- Since newborns track statistical regularities, statistical learning mechs are available at birth or before
- Vital component in language learning (infants prefer certain patterns over others)
What is Classical Conditioning?
- A form of learning that consists of pairing a neutral stimulus with one that already elicits a natural response
- Displayed by newborn infants
What is an Unconditioned Stimulus?
-Stimulus that reliably elicits reflexive, unlearned response (unconditioned response)
What is a Conditioned Stimulus?
- The neutral stimulus that is repeatedly paired just before unconditioned stimulus
- Eventually the reflexive response becomes a learned behavior (conditioned response)
What is Instrumental Conditioning?
- AKA Operant Conditioning
- Learning the realtionship between one’s own behavior & the consequences it results in
What is Observational Learning/ imitation?
- Imitating the behavior of others
- Used to acquire both instrumental skills (object related knowledge) & social conventions (rituals & other behaviors specific to social group)
- Based on the anaylsis of person’s intentions
When is Observational Learning more robust?
-By second half of first year= imitation of facial gestures, novel/strange actions that are perfomed on other objects
What area is responsible for imitation?
-Mirror Neuron system
What is Rational Learning?
-Ability to use prior experiences to predict what will occur in the future
What is Active learning?
-Learning by acting on the world & testing hypothesis on how things work
What is the Nativist side on Cognition?
- Infants are born posess innate knowledge of the physical world=2 objects cannot occupy the same space
- Infants posess rudimentary understanding in the domans of biology & psychlogy
What is the Constructivist side on Cognition?
- Theres specialized learning mechanisms that enable infants to acquire knowledge effectively & rapidly
- Infant’s mental representations of the world are gradually aquired & strengthened through General learning mech
What is Violation of Expectancy and what does it demonstrate?
- Procedure used to study infant cognition that violates something that the infant know to be true
- Infants as young as 3.5 months looked longer at impossible event
What research methods are used to represent that infants can represent objects continued existance?
- Reaching in the dark
- Visual attention
When does an infant’s Knowledge about the Physical world start?
- As young as 1 year infants know that objects don’t float in middair, that an inadequately supported object will fall, non-round object will stay put on a stable surface
- 5 month olds understand key differences between liquids & solids
What’s an important aspect of Social Knowledge and when does it develop?
- Understanding that the behavior of others has purpose & is goal directed
- Emerges at around 6 mos, also shows preference for characters that are shown in a more positive light
How do infants understand the intentions of others?
-Figuring out what kinds of objects have intentions
What cues to babies use when observing other humans?
-Eye-gaze & infant directed speech= used if they should follow the actor’s gaze
