w4 Flashcards
What evidence suggests that some perceptual abilities develop early in infancy?
Von Hofsten & Fazel-Zandy (1984): 4.5-month-old babies show orientational hand adjustment appropriate to the target (e.g., baby with an overhead mobile).
Von Hofsten & Rönnqvist (1988): 9-month-olds begin grasp matching target size and anticipating holding objects.
What is the perceptual development theory?
Perceptual development theory explains how infants and children learn to interpret and understand sensory information from their environment.
What is Empiricism vs. Rationalism?
Empiricism: Knowledge comes primarily from experience through our senses.
Rationalism: Reason and innate ideas are the primary sources of knowledge.
What is the Empiricism vs. Nativism debate in developmental psychology?
Empiricism: Emphasizes the role of environment and learning in shaping a child’s development (‘We learn from what we experience.’).
Nativism/Rationalism: Emphasizes the role of innate abilities and genetic predispositions in shaping a child’s development (‘We’re born with some knowledge.’).
What is Idealism vs. Realism?
Idealism: Reality is fundamentally mental or dependent on our minds.
Realism: Reality exists independently of our minds.
What is Developmental Integration vs. Developmental Differentiation in developmental psychology?
Developmental Differentiation: Perception starts as a unified whole and becomes more differentiated over time (like Idealism).
Developmental Integration : Perception starts with separate sensory experiences that become integrated over time (like Realism).
What is Piaget’s constructionism?
A theory of cognitive development emphasizing how children actively construct their understanding of the world through their experiences.
How does Piaget’s constructionism relate to the Empiricism vs. Nativism debate?
Children have Innate abilities = NATIVIST
Experience builds knowledge + Schemas modified by experience = EMPIRICISM
What does Piaget mean by ‘sensorimotor’ development?
The first stage of cognitive development (from birth to about 2 years old) where infants learn about the world through their senses and motor actions.
What are ‘qualitative shifts’ in Piaget’s theory?
Significant changes in how children think and understand the world, marking transitions from one stage of development to the next. The way a child understands the world fundamentally changes during these shifts.
What is differentiation?
Differentiation is the ability to perceive an object and distinguish it by position, colour, and lightness.
How do infants develop differentiation?
Infants initially fuse features together and gradually learn to differentiate objects and features at finer levels.
What is integration?
Integration is the process of combining position, colour, and lightness to perceive an object as a whole.
How do infants develop integration?
Infants link features together to form a coherent perception of objects.
What’s the differentiation account of perceptual development?
According to Gibson’s theory, perceptual development is progressive discrimination rather than feature integration. Infants first detect amodal properties like rhythm and intensity.
What methods were used in perceptual development?
- Early observation techniques (Darwin, Piaget)
- Looking time techniques
- Developmental cognitive neuroscience techniques (e.g., imaging, marker tasks).
What are the kinds of infant looking studies?
- Visual preference and preferential tracking
- Visual habituation
- Violation of expectation
- Eye tracking
- 4D ultrasound.
What are the limitations of behavioural methods?
- Looking is limited
- ‘Longer looking’ is ambiguous
- Infant behavior is noisy
- Behavior masks competence
- Behavior is downstream
- Experimenter bias.
What are marker tasks?
Marker tasks are behavioral tests used to track infant brain development by comparing their performance to known adult brain differences.
What is an infant EEG study?
An infant EEG study involves placing a cap with electrodes on an infant’s head to collect ERP and oscillation data. It has low spatial but high temporal resolution.
What’s the difference between infant and adult EEGs?
- Difficult to collect many trials
- Harder to control movement artifacts
- More expensive EGI system is used for faster application.
What is Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)?
fNIRS is like an fMRI but smaller, using infrared light to measure blood oxygenation.
What is temporal resolution?
Temporal resolution refers to how often data is collected (e.g., how frequently brain scans are taken).
What is spatial resolution?
Spatial resolution refers to the level of detail in data regarding location.
How do imaging methods compare for infant participants?
EEG/ERP: High temporal, low spatial, easy for infants.
MEG: High temporal, moderate spatial, moderately tolerable.
fNIRS: Moderate temporal, low-moderate spatial, low-moderate tolerance.
fMRI/DTI: Moderate temporal, high spatial, high tolerance.
PET: Moderate-low temporal, moderate spatial, high tolerance.
Why use brain imaging with infants?
- Limited behavioral measures (infants don’t speak)
- Helps resolve interpretation disagreements
- Gives access to early cognitive processing
- Aids in understanding developmental processes.
What did Fantz (1961) discover about infant visual preferences?
Fantz (1961) found that week-old infants prefer looking at faces over other stimuli.
What study suggests infants perceive objects like us?
Slater et al. (1983) habituated infants to a shape and tested their ability to discriminate new shapes, showing they perceive objects similarly to adults.
What is fixed trial familiarisation?
A method where infants are repeatedly shown a stimulus a set number of times to reduce responsiveness to specific aspects of the stimulus.
What did Slater (1991) demonstrate regarding form constancy in infants?
Slater (1991) showed infants recognize a shape (e.g., an obtuse/acute angle) as the same despite orientation changes, demonstrating form constancy.
What did Slater, Mattock, and Brown (1990) reveal about size constancy in infants?
Slater, Mattock, & Brown (1990) found infants recognize objects as the same size despite retinal size differences due to varying distances.
What are the limitations of visual constancy in infants?
Infants gradually develop visual constancy for lightness and surface reflectance. Yang et al. (2014) found 3-4 month-olds detect light changes but not glossiness, while 7-8 month-olds detect glossiness but not light changes.
What did Kellman and Spelke (1983) demonstrate about object perception in infants?
Kellman & Spelke (1983) showed 4-month-olds perceive a partially occluded rod as a single object, supporting innate object unity perception.
What did Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman (1985) demonstrate about the violation of expectations in infants?
Baillargeon et al. (1985) found 3.5-month-olds looked longer at ‘impossible’ events where objects appeared to pass through each other.
What is the core knowledge account?
Spelke proposed that humans have innate neural systems providing core knowledge about numerosity, object permanence, and solidity.
What is the evidence of the core knowledge account?
Spelke et al. (1992) found 2.5-month-olds understand solidity by looking longer at events violating it.
What is the shelf error?
Infants mistakenly reach through a visible barrier to grasp an object, revealing difficulties in understanding object permanence and solidity.
What does the shelf error suggest about infant cognition?
It suggests a gap between infants’ visual understanding and their ability to act on that understanding, persisting even in 2-year-olds.
What is the crossmodal binding problem for infants?
Integrating sensory inputs is challenging due to differences in processing, but infants show early multisensory abilities.
What does infant pacifier preference reveal about multisensory perception?
Infants (1.5 months) look longer at a pacifier matching the texture they orally explored, showing early tactile-visual integration.
What are Amodal properties?
Features shared across senses, such as rhythm, tempo, or duration (e.g., a bouncing ball’s motion matching its sound).
What is Redundant stimulation?
When multiple senses receive the same information, such as seeing and hearing a clap simultaneously.
What is Modality-specific features?
Features unique to one sense, like shape (visual) or pitch (auditory).
What is the evidence for the intersensory redundancy hypothesis?
Studies (Gogate & Bahrick, 1998; Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000) show infants learn better when amodal properties are shared across senses.
What is a contrasting account of multisensory development?
Molyneux’s Question (Locke, 1690) suggests senses develop separately rather than being naturally integrated.
What is the modern answer to Molyneux’s Question?
Held et al. (2011) found cataract patients initially couldn’t match touch to vision but learned within a week, suggesting early amodal learning ability.
When does face perception begin in infants?
Pascalis et al.: Newborns can distinguish human and ape faces but specialize in human faces by 10 months. Johnson et al. (1991): 30-minute-old babies track faces. Newborns prefer direct eye contact.
What is perceptual narrowing?
The reduction in sensitivity to task-irrelevant domains; a signature of developing specialization.
Do face preferences exist before birth?
Reid et al.: 4D ultrasound shows fetuses track face-like stimuli in utero. 39 fetuses oriented more toward upright than inverted faces.
What is interactive specialisation?
The brain specializes in response to experiences, guided by innate architecture.
How does face perception develop in infants?
Preferential tracking of faces is present at birth (Johnson et al., 1991) and possibly before (Reid et al., 2017). Face preference (looking longer at faces) emerges around 2 months (Maurer & Barrera, 1981).
What brain systems are responsible for face perception in infants?
Johnson & Morton (1991) propose two systems: 1. Subcortical (SC/Pulvinar; ConSpec): Mediates early tracking. 2. Cortical (FFA; ConLearn): Develops later for face preferences.
How does face specialisation in the brain change with age?
fMRI studies show face-processing areas develop beyond infancy and become specialized through childhood and adolescence.
What evidence is there that auditory perception develops in utero?
Before birth, fetuses react to loud sounds. DeCasper & Fifer (1980): Newborns (≤3 days old) recognize their mother’s voice using non-nutritive sucking. DeCasper & Spence (1986): Newborns prefer stories heard in the womb.
When does olfactory learning begin in babies?
Olfactory and taste sensitivity develop in utero. Schaal et al. (1998): Newborns prefer their mother’s amniotic fluid scent.
What is the transnatal chemosensory continuity hypothesis?
Schaal (2015): Infants’ exposure in utero shapes postnatal preferences through chemosensory experiences.
How does olfactory learning in utero affect postnatal preferences?
Schaal et al. (1998): Newborns accept anise if their mother consumed it during pregnancy. Menella et al. (2001): Infants prefer cereal with carrot juice if their mother drank it during pregnancy.
Do babies experience touch in utero?
Castiello et al. (2010): Twin fetuses interact intentionally by 14-18 weeks gestation, touching more gently and deliberately.
What social-cognitive ability do infants show through eye-tracking?
Southgate et al. (2007): 2-year-olds anticipate where an adult with a false belief will search, showing early theory of mind.
What is haptic perception?
The process of recognizing objects through touch.
What is manual preference?
A tendency to use one hand more than the other, linked to handedness development.
What is habituation?
A form of learning where a decreased response occurs after repeated exposure to a stimulus.
How is auditory perception studied in infants?
Conditioned head turn procedure: Measures phoneme discrimination. Eimas et al. (1971): Infants (1-2 months) can distinguish phonemes like /b/, /d/, /g/.
What is perceptual narrowing in speech perception?
Werker & Tees (1984): 6-month-olds discriminate phonemes across languages, but by 12 months, they lose this ability for non-native sounds.
How does face perception specialize in infancy?
Newborns recognize faces, possibly even before birth. Over the first year, face recognition specializes for human, upright faces. Johnson’s model: An innate face-orienting mechanism (subcortical SC) guides experience-driven cortical specialization.
