Task 2 Flashcards
Development of perception
Methods to measure perception:
- preferential looking
PL: determine where infant is looking; rather look at new/interesting stimuli -> spontaneous looking preferences
- assess infants visual acuity (how well infants can perceive details -> prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast)
Methods to measure perception:
- habituation
- studying sensory and perceptual development
- repeatedly presenting and infant with a particular stimulus until the infant’s response declines
- then, a new stimulus is presented and if the infant’s response increases, it is concluded that the infant can discriminate between the habituation stimulus and new stimulus
Methods to measure perception:
- visual evoked potential
VEP: electrical signals via the scalp
- objective measure of visual system’s ability to detect details
- determines visual acuity
Definition of sensation
processing of basic information from the external world, by our sensory receptors
Definition of perception
process of organizing and interpreting sensory information about objects, events and spatial layout of the world around us
Definition of Intermodal Perception
coordination of information from different senses (hearing and vision) into a perceptual whole
- e.g. hearing mother’s voice helps newborn recognize her face
(Vision) Development of …
… visual acuity
- poor contrast sensitivity: can only detect a pattern when it has contrasting elements
- widely spaced and poorly developed cone receptors
- visual cortex only partially developed and becomes more developed at 3 and 6 months
(Vision) Development of …
… contrast sensitivity
- measured by determining smallest difference between dark and light bars of a grating, at which an observer can still detect bars
(Vision) Development of …
… perceiving color
- develops early, appreciable color vision present within first 3-4 moths of life
- 4 months: categorize colors he same way adult trichromats do
(Vision) Development of …
… perceiving depth
- optical expansion: visual image of an object increases in size as the object comes toward us -> infants sensitive to this
- 0-3 months: kinetic cues (how much something moves)
- stereopsis
- monocular cues
- victorial cues
(Vision) Development of …
… perceiving faces
- infants can distinguish between different faces
- young infants prefer to look at face-like stimuli
- 2 days old: able to recognize their mother’s face; preference for mother overrides usual tendency towards new stimuli
(Vision) Development of …
… object perception
- perceptual constancy
- object segregation
- perceptual constancy: perceiving a constant shape and size
- object segregation: perception of boundaries between objects
(Hearing) Development of auditory perception
- threshold for hearing a tone
- newborns can hear and are capable of crude sound localization
- 3-6 months-old: infant and adult audibility functions look similar
(Hearing) Development of auditory perception
- recognition of mother’s voice
- newborns can identify sounds the have heard before
- 2-day-old: modify sucking on a nipple in order to hear sound of mother’s voice
(Hearing) Development of auditory perception
- speech perception
- ability to discern meaning though words and sentences emerges before infant can produce speech
- 1-month-olds: categorical perception of phonemes
- infants capable of determining speech segmentation
