Sensory and Motor Development 1

Question 1

Working with young children

–different stages of development in a child

Answer 1

foetus(prior to birth) - cog. development through hearing primarily
neonate (1st few days post-birth) - good for research looking at innate skill or learned through experience (can do it = innate skill)
infant(birth-2yrs)
preschooler (2-4yrs)
childhood (5yrs-adolescence)
adolescent (12-18yrs)
adult (18yrs+ and beyond)

Question 2

Working with infants
what can they do?
how do we test them?

Answer 2

infants are a source of vital knowledge about human development eg. perception, cognition, social and emotional development, neurology
-infants can’t talk and understand little or no language = therefore have to use non- linguistic paradigms eg. shape environment and measure response(similar to how we would test rats)
-often not capable of producing complex or organised behaviour
-often can’t move around
-can become grumpy very quickly
–> to combat = use methods suitable for non-lingustic populations
-we rely on help from parents/caregivers
-we need to take advantage of whatever behaviours or dispositions infants possess
Methods used:
-infants CAN look - eg. gaze can be directed to more intereting stimuli
- infants CAN suck - eg. non-nutritive teet wired up to transducter = measure sucking rate (sucks faster when something is exciting/ scary etc.)
-infants CAN grasp -
-infants CAN later in life crawl and eventually walk -> as an infant becomes more capable to explore their environment it has v. big consequences for cognitive development

Question 3

Paradigms used
-sucking
-looking
(number)

Answer 3

-sucking - baby given dummy to suck + baseline sucking rate measured, then shown a stimulus
suck more = more excited= noticed change in stimuli
no change in suck = haven’t noticed change
- looking - Visual Paired Comparison Task (VPC task)
baby shown a picture until they habituate (ie get bored) then shown that pic and new pic and we measure how long they look at old and new pic
look at new pic more = remember old pic
- looking - number
to investigate whether they understand number= show pics with 3 dots repeatedly. Then show pic with 3 dots and 5 dots side by side
if they look longer at 5 dots = understand number (notice difference, but not at conscious level)
proportion of time spent looking at new pic tells us:
-can they tell 2 things are different?
- can they remember 1st pic?
- what info have they encoded (ie. noticed and remembered) from the pic?

Question 4

Working with newborns

Answer 4

-birth can be difficult= common for newborns to experience issues that need medical attention (=can’t test these babies)
-to test newborns are OK to use in studies use :Apgar scale (0-10score)
A=appearance (blue- pink)
P = pulse (absent - 100bpm)
G = grimace (no response - grimace/cries)
A = activity (none - all limbs flex)
R = respiration (absent - robust cry)
scores of 8/9/10 = seen as being ok and healthy enough

Question 5

Vision
newborns
1-2months
4 months
8months
1yr

Answer 5

• newborns - blurred/fuzzy vision - can see shape, light, movement, not yet capable of fixation. Range = 30cm
• 1-2 months - can fixate objects, can distinguish high-contrast colours (black/white, not yet red/orange)
• 4months - depth perception and improved colour vision, can follow objects with eyes (without turning head)
• 8 months - visual range increases - can recognise people across a room (deeper visual range) = can learn more about environment = important in perceptual shaping
• 1year - vision similar to adult levels

Question 6

Vision
seeing faces:
birth
Fantz's 1961 studys
seeing specific faces

Answer 6

birth - infants show a preferential interest in face-like stimuli
-Fantz’s 1961 study - showed series of stimuli and observed their looking behaviour
found: looked at face-like stimuli more
(limitation - may have been due to face-like stimuli having more interesting stimuli round periphery)
from 1st month infants showed a small but consistent preference for the face-like configuration = we are hard-wired to recognise faces
(even when images are moving = follow face-like stimuli for longer)
-seeing specific faces
even within a day of birth, newborns are able to recognise individual faces
(show them mother and strangers face =stare at mothers face longer –even when smells are masked)
= v. impressive considering a babys visual acuity is v poor
Visual recognition in babies is unlikely to be accompanied by any cognitive insight (eg. no thoughts beyond recognition)
-although early recognition will form the basis for later mental representations

Question 7

Vision
perceptual narrowing
‘other race’ effect
role of experience in perceptual narrowing

Answer 7

infants visual perception becomes increasingly tailored to regular features if the childs environment
-very general abities are more finely tuned following experience = particularly with facial recognition
– ‘other race’ effect - demonstrates how it gradually becomes more finely tuned
-initially infants are able to discriminate well between faces they see
-they gradually become extremely good at distinguising between faces they see around them= gradually losing ability to discriminate between faces they don’t see often (Kelly et al 2007) eg. other races
- experience
its possible to retain discrimination ability by shaping the infants experience–> shown through studies where children read picture books to their infants (Heron-Delaney)
6-9months = period where children retain or lose ability (crucial period)
-children given 70 mins of picture book exposure over 3 months - involving chinese or caucasian faces
found: 9 month olds shown chinese faces retained ability to recognise chinese faces, whereas, those shown caucasian faces lost ability
shows: -face processing abilities are shaped by experience (this isn’t unique to humans – kids can discriminate macaques too)
=shows its a low level perceptual ability, not a human ability as we lose it as we mature

Question 8

Hearing
Kisilevsky - womb
how much auditory info do babies pick up?

Answer 8

sound can be perceived in the womb (unlike vision)
from 26 weeks gestation, foetuses show changes in heart rate as a direct response to auditory stimuli (kisilevsky)
They are able to recognise the sound of their mothers voice(kisilevsky)
-Decasper and Spence (1986) - asked pregnant women to read a 3 min story every day for the final 6 weeks of their pregnancy
after birth played recording of familiar story and unfamiliar
found: newborns preferred story they heard in womb (shown by increased sucking rate)
(even found this in condition where stories read by stranger and not mother)
control- babies not read story in womb and found they didn’t have a preference for either

Question 9

hearing

specialised with age

Answer 9

hearing does become more specialised with age
infants are initially able to distinguish between phonemes that don’t occur in their native lang– this narrows to sounds contained in their own lang
– Infants show a preference for motherese rather than typical adult-like speech (Cooper and Aslin)
(motherese helps to show baby where words end and others begin etc =disambiguate speech stream)
- children pay more attention to speech when it has a higher and wider pitch range
motherese def = the common way of adapting your speech to have an exaggerated pitch range/exaggeration of exisiting patterns of speech
-thought to help infants extract smaller chunks of lang
-imporant 1st step in infants learning lang