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)