Week 7 Flashcards
How did researchers study infants understanding of objects?
Habituation or familiarisation followed by 2 test trials:
Unexpected e.g. impossible or incongruent scenario
Expected e.g. possible or congruent scenario
What are infants unity abilities at 4 months?
- Infants infer the boundaries of a partly hidden object by analysing their movements
- If occluded elements move together = infants infer the presence of a single unitary object
What are infants continuity expectations at 4 months?
Expected objects to exist in one location at a time and used spatiotemporal continuity of object motion as evidence for a single object
What are infants solidity expectations?
6-8 months = found surprising when toy train did not stop at wall -> they think of objects as solid bodies that cannot interpenetrate other objects
What are infants contact and inertia expectations?
Infants expect that objects need to be put in motion by other objects
[Contact: objects need to touch other objects to influence their movement]
[Inertia: objects do no move on their own]
What are infants gravity expectations?
4 months = knowledge of gravity (had surprise when object was floating in air - expect it to fall down)
What can animals imprint on?
People, animals or objects
What does Chiandetti and Vallortigara (2011) chick imprinting study show us?
Almost all chicks show a basic intuition of physical knowledge = shows it is a part of our biological knowledge
Describe the two important ideas that gave rise to the theory of core knowledge
- Very young human infants display quite sophisticated knowledge about the physical world of objects around them
- Newborn animals of other species do this too (even if they are phylogenetically distant from humans)
Describe the Theory of Core Knowledge
Evolution endowed humans and other animals with systems of knowledge about specific aspects of the world e.g. objects, places, approx numbers
Name 4 features of the theory of core knowledge
- Each system operates as a whole, distinct from other systems
- Each system is present throughout the lifetime
- Each system is limited
- Each system supports further learning
What is the core knowledge system of objects?
Where infants make sense of the observed events; guides their learning and exploration
Is the theory of core knowledge an empiricist or nativist perspective?
Nativist
What are the signature limitations of core object knowledge?
Some physical objects are not a part of infants core knowledge system = infants can’t differentiate between objects
> this is because infants need to be sensitive to physical properties of object, categorise them and store them in the right place in order to remember there is 2 different objects
What is egocentric in terms of space?
Where objects are represented relative to one’s body
What is allocentric in terms of space?
Landmark Based: where objects are represented relative to landmarks e.g. by the door
Absolute: where objects are represented relative to landscape or celestial constancies e.g. south of the room
Do infants use geometric properties of the environment to locate objects? Use study support
Newcombe et al (1999)
5 months = infants have some form of allocentric spatial representation
Infants can encode the hiding location with respect to the geometric properties of the environment to encode the location of a hidden object
Can infants represent space allocentrically? Use study support
Kaufman and Needham (2011)
Infants dishabituated in the conditions where the pig moved with respect to the table
Infants are capable of setting up allocentric spatial representations
Describe how rats behaved during the disorientation task
Rats would go equally as often to the corner where the reward was placed and the corner where there was no reward
This is because they used geometric information to locate their reward instead of using landmark information = geometric error
What is the difference between adult and infant behaviour during the disorientation task?
Adults:
- when they have landmark = used it to locate reward
- when they didn’t have landmark = behaved like rats
Infants (18-24 months):
- behaviour mimicked the rats - noticed coloured wall, but didn’t use this info to find the reward
- shows they failed to combine geometric and landmark information
What three types of verbal expressions were used in the disorientation task?
- Spatial expression
- Non-spatial but task-relevant expression
- Verbal expression that drew attention to the landmark in a task-irrelevant manner
What were the results of the disorientation task when it included verbal expressions?
- Infants continued to perform like rats when verbal expression was irrelevant to task
- When given spatial expression/non-spatial but task-relevant expression they would mimic the patterns they saw in adults and use the landmark info
