Senses and Perception Flashcards
Briefly describe early conceptions of infancy
- limited in terms of cognitive and sensory abilities
- Locke: blank slate
- James: feels everything as confusion
- Piaget: simple reflexes occur and infants are born with sucking, following with eyes and grasping
- these underestimate the abilities beyond reflexes - newborns can process and retain sensory info (in utero) - act as precursors to cog developmental
Explain neonatal reflexes
- more than Piaget thought
- serving different, evolutionary purposes
- breathing, swallowing
- rooting and sucking (breastfeeding)
- diving and swimming
- grasping with palm – to finger thumb grasp
also less clear:
- stepping (helps turn in womb)
- moro reflex (spreading arms)
some reflexes vanish but some stay (automatic)
How can we observe a fetus?
- before it was limited to post-mortem (usually biases and cannot reveal behaviour/learning
- modern tech: ultrasound (high freq bouncing off)- non-invasive and can see different sensations
Describe 4 parts of sensory development
TOUCH
- 8 weeks on - response to touch
- 12-13 weeks - makes contact and moves towards toucj
CHEMOSENSATIONS
- 12 weeks - swallowing amniotic fluid - increases if the fluid is sweetened
- newborns show preference for foods mother ate while pregnant
HEARING
- 20-24 weeks - fetus responds to sounds with movements
- many sounds permeate the environment
- easiest to study; well stimulated
SIGHT
- 26-27 weeks - fetus reacts to bright light shone on abdomen
This is interesting as it shows sensory development and response BEFORE BIRTH - MIND ISN’T BLANK - learning can occur in the womb
- these cognitive abilities suggest preferences, familiarity and learning
Describe habituation/ dishabituation
- If a stimulus is familiar, they stop reacting to it = habituation
- if the stimulus is changed, they will react to it
How does heart rate monitoring track fetal reactions to stimuli?
- slowing heart rate = indicates interest, attention - habituation - shows learning
- speeding heart rate = indicates startling
dishabituation - shows discrimination
This shows that a fetus can detect and recognise familiar and discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar
Describe DeCaspar’s study into prenatal auditory development
- 33 - 37 weeks in pregnancy
- mothers read nursery rhyme outloud and repeated it (exposure overtime - habituates)
- at 37 weeks - fetal responses were tested - recordings of the mothers and new rhyme
- heart rate was decreased when listening to the same rhyme and increased with new rhymes
- this is because fetus has learnt the pattern before - prior exposure to speech etc can affect reactions tot he sounds
- also shows ability of fetus to retain info
Describe Slater et al’s study into shape perception of infants
- tested neonates (between 7 hours to 9 days)
- Habituation paradigm: presented 2D shaped (measured through looking times)
- presented new 2D shapes and found that looking time increased - showed discrimination and looking preference
Describe Slater’s study into object unity in infants
- newborns and 4-month-olds
- habituation phase - rod behind a rectangle - if they understand unity, they should find a broken rod novel
- measured looking times to whole and broken rods
- newborns showed novelty preference for the whole rod: perceived the habituation display as 2 rods - DID NOT PERCEIVE OBJECT UNITY
- 4-month-olds showed novelty preference for broken rod. Perceived habituation display as one rod - DID PERCEIVE OBJECT UNITY - BROKEN WAS NEW TO THEM
- object unity is not present at birth but develops rapidly
What is object unity?
- ability to percieve a complete object even when parts aren’t visible
- sophisticated mental representations
What is the difference between perception and cognition?
- perception is what we can see in the here and now - these sensory processes underlie the development of ignition
- cognition is what we understand about what we perceive and the ability to perform mental representations of what we have perceived
- interacts with memory, language and reasoning
