Week Four - Perceptual Development Flashcards
What was John Locke’s view on newborns sensation?
Newborns mind is like a white page where all ideas and abilities are developed through learning and experience
What did William James propose about newborns sensation?
That babies cannot distinguish between sensations
What is today’s view on infants sensation?
Infants are born with many skills and actively learn many more, rapidly, as they explore
What is sensation?
detection and discrimination of sensory information
What is perception
Interpretation of those sensations including recognition and identification
What is the most important sense?
Vision
- takes up nearly half of the cerebral cortex and improves over first months of life
What are some popular testing methods for vision?
Preferential looking task
Habituation
Conditioned head-turn
What is preferential looking task assessing?
Whether the infant can discriminate between two similar visual stimuli (looking time is measured)
What is habituation?
A gradual decrease in response to interest in a repeated stimulus
What is novelty preference?
Human preference for anything new or different
Why is habituation useful?
Means we won’t continuously notice things that are there all the time and don’t need our attention
What do infants lack at birth?
Visual acuity but improves during first month (nd better when tracking/scanning)
What age is visual acuity in infants adult level?
6 months
How do we test visual acuitty?
Preferential looking (narrow stripes over plain)
Colour vision in infants?
Initially limited but develops quickly as cones mature (2-3 mo = adult categories)
As infants get older, what do they prefer?
More complex patterns
What does the preference of complex patterns in infants mean?
Means better understanding of structure
What do edges and contrasts provide?
Information on the boundary of an object
Depth and how to grasp objects
Greater neural activation
Helps develop neural pathways of pattern recognition