Week 1 - Critical Periods and Visual Development

Question 1

Empiricism

Answer 1

• General learning system present from birth

- Experience shapes our skills and knowledge

Question 2

Nativism

Answer 2

• Different sets of learning systems that are designed to acquire certain types of information
• Certain aspects of mental life are a core part of being human and they are present from the beginning

Question 3

Continuous Development

Answer 3

• Continuity
• Quantitative Change
• Development is incremental and gradual

Question 4

Discontinuous Development

Answer 4

• Discontinuity
• Qualitative Change
• A new structure or process emerges that was not there
  before

Question 5

Samples in Development

Answer 5

• White
• Educated
• Industrialized
• Rich
• Democratic

Question 6

Acuity

Answer 6

• Sharpness of clarity of vision
• Ability to see contrasts that represent lines, shapes, and shadows
• 20/20 vision

Question 7

Preferential Looking

Answer 7

• Present two stimuli

- Does the infant show preference in either one of the stimuli?

Question 8

Challenges of Preferential Looking

Answer 8

• Two stimuli can’t differ in any way other than the width of the stripes
• Colour
• Luminance

Question 9

How to test acuity?

Answer 9

1. Preferential Looking
2. Habituation
3. Optokinetic Nystagmus
4. Visual Evoked Potentials

Question 10

Face Perception in Babies

Answer 10

• Babies like looking at faces, even in the womb

- As they develop, they become expert face processors

Question 11

Face Perception in Adults

Answer 11

Can:

• Recognize 1000s of faces
• Recognize faces when hairstyles have changed
• Recognize faces when someone takes their glasses off or put their glasses on
• Recognize faces after someone has aged many years

Question 12

When does face perception become adult like?

Answer 12

• Adult-like skill at face recognition does not occur until sometime during adolescence
• In tasks in which participants are asked to learn new faces and then recognize them, 14-year-olds make more mistakes than do adults

Question 13

Featural processing

Answer 13

Processing the shape of individual features

Question 14

Configural processing

Answer 14

Processing the distance between two features

Question 15

Which type of facial processing is adult like first?

Answer 15

Featural processing (adult-like by age of 10)

Question 16

When does acuity become adult-like?

Answer 16

At around 3 years old (36 months)

Question 17

Habituation

Answer 17

__

Question 18

Optokinetic Nystagmus

Answer 18

__

Question 19

Visual Evoked Potential

Answer 19

__

Question 20

Critical Periods in Development

Answer 20

• Period during which input/experience is necessary to achieve typical outcomes
• Lack of input after that period will not have detrimental effects

Question 21

Critical Period in Visual Development (Cataract experiment)

Answer 21

• Babies born with cataracts (One or both eyes) –> Deprived of patterned visual input until the cataract is corrected
• Compared infants born with cataracts in one or both eyes to age-matched controls
• Tested acuity of babies with cataracts right
  after corrective lenses were inserted
• Follow ups at 1 hour, 1 week, 1 month

Question 22

Conclusion of baby cataract experiment

Answer 22

• Children who are deprived of patterned visual input between about 10 days and 10 years of age experience permanent deficits in acuity
• Children who are born with vision, but have it compromised before the age of 10- years, will have poorer acuity when their vision is corrected

Question 23

Visual Development Experiment (Patients born with bilateral cataracts)

Answer 23

• Compared 14 patients born with bilateral
  cataracts (mean age = 14 years) to age-matched controls and to typically developing adults
• Created sets of faces that differed in either spacing or features, and the task of participants was to same “same or different”

Question 24

Results of Patients born with bilateral cataract experiment

Answer 24

• considerable difference in configural processing compared to the control
• Conclusion: Visual experience in infancy is necessary for typical development of face processing