Sensory and Motor Development Flashcards
Problems with working with infants
They can’t talk, and understand little to no language
They’re often not capable of producing complex or organised behaviour
They often can’t move around
They get grumpy quickly
How to get around problems with working with infants
Use methods which are non-linguistic
Help from parents
Take advantage whatever behaviours or dispositions infants possess
What can infants do?
Look - look away when bored or look when interested
Suck - bored will suck slower, excited will suck more
Grasp - can they integrate touch information
Crawl and eventually walk - move towards things they like/away from things they don’t
Sucking
Measure baseline sucking rate
Measure rate as different stimulus’ shown
If no difference we assume they have not noticed the difference
Looking
Visual Paired Comparison Task (VPC)
Shown a picture until they habituate (get bored and look away)
Shown two pictures at once (old and new)
Measure how much they look at the new picture
Problems with working with newborns
Birth can be a difficult process
Common for newborns to experience issues which need medical attention
How do you check if a newborn is ok enough to take part in a study?
Apgar scale (0 - 10) Score of 8 or above is good Appearance - blue or pink Pulse - absent to >100 bpm Grimace - no response to grimaces and cries Activity - none to all limbs flex Respiration - absent to robust crying
Vision in newborns
Fuzzy, can see light, shapes and movement
Not yet capable of fixation
Range of vision about 30cm
Vision in babies 1-2 months
Can fixate
Can distinguish high-contrast colours (black/white)
Vision in babies of 4 months
Depth perception and improved colour vision
Can follow objects with eyes without turning head
Vision in babies of 8 months
Visual range increases - can recognise people from across the room
Vision in babies of 1 year
Vision similar to adult levels
Fantz’s 1961
Showed a series of stimuli to young infants and observed their looking behaviour
Shown face like stimulus, jumbled face like stimulus or just outline
Looked more at the face like stimulus than others
Within ____ of birth, newborns are able to recognise specific faces (their mother)
1 day
Bushnell et al (1989)
Newborn infants’ ability to recognise their mother’s face persists even when olfactory cues are removed (used just visual system)
Walton (1992)
Newborns can recognise their mother even when inadvertent visual cues are controlled for
Perceptual narrowing - vision
Infants’ visual perception becomes increasingly tailored to regular features of the child’s environment
General abilities are more finely tuned following experience
The Other Race Effect
Infants are initially able to discriminate between the faces they see
Gradually become extremely good at distinguishing between the kinds of faces they see around them
Also, they gradually lose the ability to discriminate between faces they don’t see often
Heron-Delaney et al (2011)
6 month olds look at picture book of faces
70 minutes of exposure over 3 months either involving Chinese or Caucasian faces
9 month olds shown Chinese faces retained the ability to recognise Chinese faces
Those shown Caucasian faces lost this ability
Pascalis et al (2005)
Book-training studies aren’t unique to humans
Infants can recognise individuals from other species with book-training
Can you hear things in the womb?
Yes
Heart rate can be measured as direct response to auditory stimuli from 26 weeks gestation (Kisilevsky et al, 1992))
Recognise their mother’s voice (Kisilevsky, et al 2003)
DeCaspar & Spence (1986)
Asked pregnant women to read 3 minute story every day for final 6 weeks of pregnancy
Just after birth, they played newborns the familiar story and an unfamiliar one
Newborns preferred hearing the story read while they were in the womb (sucked more)
Even true when read by a stranger
Trehub (1976)
Infants are initially able to distinguish between phonemes that don’t occur in their native language
Eimas et al (1971)
Ability to distinguish phonemes narrows to sounds contained in their own language with age
Perceptual narrowing - hearing
Infants gradually exchange their limitless potential for processing all types of information
What is Motherese
Speech with higher and wider pitch range
How you speak to a baby/pet
Exaggeration of natural patterns of speech in the language
Helps infants to extract smaller chunks of language
Helps to learn language
Touch in foetuses of 8 weeks
Respond to the area around the lips being touched
Touch in foetuses of 10 weeks
Reflexive grasp response when palm is touched
Touch in foetuses of 12 weeks
Toes curl when soles of feet touched
Touch in 6 month old
Automatic grasp reflex
Do newborns know what something looks like just by feeling it? (Sann & Streri, 2007)
Newborn infants given small objects to hold, either cylinder or prism, until habituation
Then shown larger version of the objects
Infants looked longer at the novel object, even though they have never seen either object before
Suggests that they know what something looks like from touch
Do newborns know what something feels like from looking at it? (Sann & Streri, 2007)
Shown either cylinder or prism
Given small objects to hold
Didn’t hold the novel object for any longer than they held the familiar object
Suggests that they cannot match vision to touch
Is cross-modal matching bi-directional?
No
Infants can identify an object they’ve previously held by visual means
Infants cannot identify an object they’ve previously seen by touch
Motor skills 1-3 months
Stepping reflex Lifts head Sits with support Grasps objects if placed in hand Sucks Smiles Control of eyes
Motor skills 2-4 months
Lifts head and uses arms for support
Grasps cube when placed near hand
Motor skills 5-8 months
Sits without support
Reaches for and grasps objects
Uses one hand
Motor skills 5-10 months
Stand with support
Pulls self to stand
Points at interesting objects
Grasps with thumb and finger
Motor skills 5-11 months
Crawls
Grasps spoon
Learns to direct food to mouth
Motor skills 10-14 months
Stands alone Walks alone Puts objects in containers Builds towers First meaningful words
Motor skills 13-18 months
Walks backwards and sideways Runs Climbs Walks up stairs Holds crayon with fingers Scribbles
Motor skills 18-30 months
Runs easily Jumps Skips Rides and steers tricycle Walks on tiptoes Picks up small objects Vocal and articulation increases rapidly
Herbert et al (2007) crawling
Acquiring the ability to move unaided brings concurrent improvements in memory
9 month olds who could crawl and those who couldn’t
Given a memory task, shown how to play with a novel toy
Toy had novel action associated with it, push button and something happens
Crawlers were able to remember the demonstration and apply it to a novel context (different toy which did the same thing)
From crawling to walking
Cameras attached to infant to track view that infants get when crawling and walking
Shows that walking gives us a different view of the world
This is why infants give up being skilled crawlers for being poor walkers
Perception
How we see, hear or directly experience the world
Cognition
How we form, use and act upon internal thoughts, states or pictures
Mental representations
Violation of Expectation task
Children are shown an event repeatedly until they habituate
They are shown one of two variations of the event, expected event or something different
If they look longer at one than the other we can say they are surprised by it
Wynn (1992)
4 and 5 month olds were shown an event where objects moved behind a screen, and the screen was then removed
Event was either possible or impossible
Looked longer at the impossible event
Object permanence
The ability to understand that even if an object can no longer be seen, it still continues to exist
Prior to 9 months, infants _____ to an object after it was hidden
Made no response
This was true even if the object was very desirable and they wanted to find it
By 9 months infants _______ that are out of view
Search for objects
Baillargeon (1986)
Infants watched a truck roll down a ramp behind a screen, with nothing behind it, until habituation
Testing phase 1, object behind the screen behind the track, the truck would roll past it
Testing phase 2, object behind screen was on the track, the truck still rolls past it
6 and 8 month old infants looked longer in condition where the track was blocked (impossible event)
Object permanence was shown as the object was out of sight
Baillargeon & DeVos (1991)
Replicated Baillargeon (1986) with 4 month olds
What do we do when findings appear to contradict each other?
Look at reliability of data
Give a best guess
How do the studies differ?
Explaining difference in Piaget and Baillargeon
Children have knowledge of the world from early infancy
BUT they only become gradually able to act on the knowledge
Cognitive development in the first year of life involves building links between knowledge and actions
