Week Four - Perceptual Development Flashcards

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1
Q

What was John Locke’s view on newborns sensation?

A

Newborns mind is like a white page where all ideas and abilities are developed through learning and experience

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2
Q

What did William James propose about newborns sensation?

A

That babies cannot distinguish between sensations

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3
Q

What is today’s view on infants sensation?

A

Infants are born with many skills and actively learn many more, rapidly, as they explore

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4
Q

What is sensation?

A

detection and discrimination of sensory information

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5
Q

What is perception

A

Interpretation of those sensations including recognition and identification

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6
Q

What is the most important sense?

A

Vision

- takes up nearly half of the cerebral cortex and improves over first months of life

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7
Q

What are some popular testing methods for vision?

A

Preferential looking task
Habituation
Conditioned head-turn

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8
Q

What is preferential looking task assessing?

A

Whether the infant can discriminate between two similar visual stimuli (looking time is measured)

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9
Q

What is habituation?

A

A gradual decrease in response to interest in a repeated stimulus

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10
Q

What is novelty preference?

A

Human preference for anything new or different

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11
Q

Why is habituation useful?

A

Means we won’t continuously notice things that are there all the time and don’t need our attention

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12
Q

What do infants lack at birth?

A

Visual acuity but improves during first month (nd better when tracking/scanning)

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13
Q

What age is visual acuity in infants adult level?

A

6 months

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14
Q

How do we test visual acuitty?

A

Preferential looking (narrow stripes over plain)

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15
Q

Colour vision in infants?

A

Initially limited but develops quickly as cones mature (2-3 mo = adult categories)

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16
Q

As infants get older, what do they prefer?

A

More complex patterns

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17
Q

What does the preference of complex patterns in infants mean?

A

Means better understanding of structure

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18
Q

What do edges and contrasts provide?

A

Information on the boundary of an object
Depth and how to grasp objects
Greater neural activation
Helps develop neural pathways of pattern recognition

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19
Q

Why are infants drawn to faces?

A

They are 3D, moving, have areas of high/low contrasts, and regulate visual stimulation

May be genetically preprogrammed to prefer faces

20
Q

How does social learning affect preferences for faces?

A

Infants prefer novel faces of same sex as their own caregiver

also have a preference for faces matching their own race

prefer smiling faces by 3 mo

21
Q

What is object constancy?

A

Perception/belief that an object remains constant, despite changes in the way it looks

22
Q

Conditioning studies suggest that infants have innate knowledge of?

A

Shape constancy and size constancy

23
Q

Why are constancies important?

A

Help maintain a stable perceptual world

24
Q

What is the evidence that object constancy develops relatively early in children?

A

The conditioned head turn paradigm

25
Q

When does depth perception start?

A

2-3 months old (learn to focus on objects at different distances) and by age 4 years = adult level

26
Q

Explain the idea behind the visual cliff experiment?

A

infants should we unwilling to cross if they can truly perceive depth

27
Q

Similarities in infant and adult heart rate?

A

Adults heart rate decelerates in response to novel/attractive and interesting stimuli

Accelerates in response to dangerous/aversive stimuli

28
Q

What 3 ways can we perceive visual depth?

A

Kinetic cues (1-3 mo)
Binocular depth cues (4-6 mo)
Pictorial distance cues (5-7 mo)

29
Q

Explain Kinetic cues

A

Produced as a person/object moves

  • motion parallax: close = faster, further = slower
  • interposition: closer objects obscure furter objects
30
Q

What are binocular depth cues?

A

inter-eye disparity is greater for closer than further objects

31
Q

What are pictorial distance cues?

A

linear perspective and texture gradient - tested with reaching studies

32
Q

What can we use to test hearing in infants?

A

Habituation (HR chaning, sucking, breathing)

33
Q

At what age can foetus respond to sounds?

A

24 weeks in utero

34
Q

How do we know infants can hear at birth?

A

Respond with startle reflex, fists, crying

35
Q

By 3 days old, infants can?

A

orient to the direction of sound (prefer complex to pure)

distinguish:
2 vs 3 syllables
happy vs negative speech
tones

36
Q

Which parts of auditory sensation continues to develop until age 10?

A

Sensitivity and pitch discrimination

37
Q

Differences between adults and infants in sound sensitivity?

A

Newborns not as sensitive to sound as adults - newborns more sensitive to low pitch

38
Q

What age can infants locate sound?

A

2 months

39
Q

Smell and taste development in infants?

A

Well developed in last months in utero - highly developed at birth

40
Q

Food taste preferences changes?

A

Changes with age

  • sweeter tastes preferred by foetus
  • salty tastes preferred by 4 mo
41
Q

How early do foetus respond to touch?

A

8 weeks

42
Q

Why is sensitivity to touch important for?

A

For exploring the environment and for positive emotional development

43
Q

What is haptic perception?

A

Use of touch to explore objects

  • oral manipulation is most informative
  • 3 yo = adult like exploration
44
Q

How do infants respond to pain?

A

with distress (crying, blood elevation) but also influenced by others reactions and the environment

45
Q

How can we assess older children’s experience of pain?

A

Faces pain scale (pointing to one that best represents)

46
Q

Explain the concept of intermodal perception

A

The ability to combine input from different senses to form a perception of unitary events or objects

Infants preferred sucked on dummy despite new visual stimulus of other dummy - suggesting IP is an innate skill that improves with experience