Chapter 4: Infant Perception and Cognition

The Violation of Expectation Method

A visual preference research method that assesses infants' ability to distinguish between an expected and an unexpected event. an infant's reaction to an unexpected event is used to infer what he or she knows.

Core Knowledge (look at chart)

Core knowledge refers to the idea that infants possess a small set of domain-specific systems of knowledge that have been shaped by natural selection and upon which new and flexible skills are built. There are at least three core-knowledge systems in infancy: object representation, knowledge of people and their actions, and an ability to represent numbers, or quantities.

Development of Visual Preferences

EXTERNALITY EFFECT: infants focus on the OUTSIDE of a FEATURE (contour of face) (rather than internal) EX: examples of visual scanning of faces by 1- and 2-month-old infants. One-month-old infants explore the contour of faces, called the externality effect, whereas 2-month-olds spend more time looking at the internal features of faces.

Development of Visual Preferences CMSCFN

Infants show a perceptual bias toward looking at: ○Contrast ○Movement ○Symmetry ○Curvature ○Familiarity/novelty Infants are also attracted to areas of high contrast, as reflected by the outline, or contour, of an object

Intro (perception, cognition, core knowledge)

PERCEPTION: the ORGANIZATION of SENSATIONS (sights, sounds, smells) COGNITION: what is DONE with PERCEIVED SENSATIONS (classifying items or events into categories, solving problems, memorizing), BUT it is HARD hard to SEE where PERCEPTION ENDS and COGNITION BEGINS. CORE KNOWLEDGE: infants' UNDERSTANDING of OBJECT REPRESENTATION and their ABILITIES to make SENSE of QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION

Infant Sensation & Perception (TTSHV)

Sensation and Perception: ○ TOUCH: WELL-DEVELOPED at birth and can be COMFORTED by touch. EX: newborns respond to another skin sense- touch or "tactical stimulation" ○ TASTE & SMELL: Can DISTINGUISH different tastes PRENATALLY and SMELLS WELL from BIRTH EX: the smell of their mothers breast milk pad EX: they develop similar taste buds to their mothers ○ HEARING: start to hear and DISCRIMINATE NOISES PRENATALLY. EX: by 1 week, babies can discriminate their mother's voices ○ VISION: LEAST DEVELOPED OF ALL SENSES as some VISUAL STRUCTURES are NOT FULLY FORMED

Development of Face Processing (2 PROCESSES)

Two-process theory for infant face preference ○ INITIAL PROCESS = accessed through SUBCORTICAL PATHWAYS, controls newborns' TRACKING OF FACES This system is responsible for human newborns' preference for the human face, but because of limited sensory capabilities, infants are not able to learn about the features of faces until about 8 weeks of age. ○ SECOND PROCESS = accessed through the CORTICAL CIRCUITS and DEVELOPMENT of SCHEMAS (a representation). The functioning of this system depends on cortical maturation and experience with faces during the first 2 months of life, as infants begin to build a representation, or schema, that enables them "to discriminate the human face from other stimuli and especially from faces of other species"

Development of Visual Perception & Preferences accommodation, convergence, coordination, acuity

● ACCOMMODATION: FOCUSING of the LENS is NOT well DEVELOPED at birth (regardless of the distance an object is from an infant's eyes, and most of what newborns look at, they see unclearly). ○Adultlike by as early as 3 months of age. ● CONVERGENCE: BOTH EYES ARE LOOKING AT THE SAME OBJECT ●COORDINATION: BOTH EYES can FOLLOW A MOVING STIMULUS in a COORDINATED FASHION ○Neither are well developed at birth BUT are adultlike by 6 months of age ●ACUITY: the ABILITY TO SEE CLEARLY ○Adult like by 6 YEARS of age but poor at birth

Habituation/Dishabituation Paradigm

● HABITUATION: ("got used to it") the DECREASE in RESPONSE as a result of REPEATED PRESENTATION OF A STIMULUS EX: The first day on the job in a noisy factory, for example, produces increased levels of physiological stress (for example, elevated heart rate and blood pressure). After a week in this environment, however, levels of stress decline, even though the noise remains ● DISHABITUATION ("release from habituation"): following habituation, a NEW STIMULUS IS PRESENTED that INCREASES level of RESPONDING EX: If we switch from Factory A to Factory B, for instance, levels of physiological stress rise, even though the new factory is no louder than the old one was. The noises are different, however, which causes an increase in responding, or a release from habituation

Research Methods (IEV)

● IMPLICIT measures: Measures that CAPTURE ASPECTS of COGNITION that are UNCONSCIOUS and CANNOT be EXPRESSED DIRECTLY or VERBALLY EX: study of babies' abilities to turn their heads in one direction or another to determine if they could discriminate and develop a preference for certain odors. (considered implicit measure of infant cognition) ● EXPLICIT measures: PARTICIPANTS REPORT on the CONTENTS of his/her COGNITION or BEHAVE in OBSERVABLE WAYS that are DIRECTLY RELATED to the TASK EX: Because infants lack sophisticated verbal ability and behavioral control, many of the techniques are implicit rather than explicit ● VISUAL PREFERENCE PARADIGM: Developed to see IF INFANTS PREFERRED ONE VISUAL STIMULI OVER ANOTHER based on which stimuli they LOOKED AT MORE Preference, as used here, is synonymous with perceptual bias and merely reveals that infants are not responding randomly. If infants failed to show a preference (or perceptual bias) between two items, however, this would not necessarily mean that they could not tell them apart. Perhaps both are equally interesting.

Combining the Senses (intercensory integration/matching)

● Intersensory INTEGRATION: the COORDINATION of INFORMATION FROM 2 OR MORE SENSORY MODALITIES Newborns move their heads and eyes in the direction of a sound ●Intersensory MATCHING: recognize an object initially inspected in one modality (like touch) through another modality (like vision). infants' developing ability to integrate sound patterns to the face patterns and movements that produce them. infants can associate lips movements congruent with the speech they are hearing

Perceptual Narrowing

● PERCEPTUAL NARROWING: the PROCESS where infants use ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE to BECOME SPECIALISTS in PERCEIVING RELEVANT STIMULI (become specialized by what they're surrounded with) As a result, however, infants become relatively less effective at perceiving some things with which they have less experience 1.) For facial discrimination Over the first year, face processing becomes increasingly specialized, and infants develop an increasing ability to discriminate between faces of their own race and experience a decreasing ability to discriminate between faces of other races, termed the other-race effect. 2.) For speech perception By 9 months of age, infants lose the ability to discriminate phonemes that do not correspond to meaningful differences in their own language and become more sensitive to the speech regularities in the language they hear every day. 3.) For music Similar narrowing is observed for music perception and intersensory perception within the first year of life. 4.) Within intersensory integration

Early Number Concepts

●APPROXIMATE NUMBER SYSTEM: a NONSYMBOLIC SYSTEM for THINKING about QUANTITIES in an IMPRECISE and INTUITIVE WAY ○Two aspects seen in infancy: ■NUMEROSITY: ability to DETERMINE QUICKLY the NUMBER of ITEMS in a set WITHOUT COUNTING ■ORDINALITY: basic UNDERSTANDING understanding of MORE THAN or LESS THAN

Psychological Stimulus Characteristics (differentiation theory, goldilocks effect)

●DIFFERENTIATION THEORY: sense of FAMILIARITY allows infants to DISTINGUISH ONE stimulus FROM ANOTHER EX: it takes time to create and store memory representations, and the brain is limited on how much information it can collect in a single exposure to a novel stimulus, so infants should prefer attending to familiar stimuli while memory representations are still being formed. Once a stable memory representation has been formed, an infant's preference should switch to a novel stimulus ● GOLDILOCKS EFFECT: (doesn't look at anything) infants LOOKING LONGER at stimuli that are NEITHER TOO SIMPLE OR TOO COMPLEX

Auditory Development

●Infants can hear in utero, so infants are born with some auditory experience. ●Infants are able to localize sounds at birth and show improvements through the first year. ●Hearing is not adultlike until age 10 years.

Object Representation

●OBJECT CONSTANCY: An object DOES NOT CHANGE IN SIZE OR SHAPE depending on how one views it. ●OBJECT COHESION and CONTINUITY: Individual objects are SEEN AS COHESIVE WHOLES with DISTINCT BOUNDARIES Infants' understanding of object cohesion and continuity (understanding that objects have boundaries) develops over the first year, as reflected by experiments using the violation-of-expectation method. ●OBJECT PERMANENCE: Objects are PERMANENT IN TIME AND SPACE whether we are perceiving them or not.

Arguments Against Core Knowledge

●Some argue infants start with a set of mechanisms for processing perceptual information and that infants acquire knowledge of objects through perceptual experience. ●Infants show a preference for looking at the novel (impossible) event over the familiar (habituated and possible) event simply because more processing is required to make sense of the former than the latter. ●BAYESIAN STATISTICAL INFERENCE: A mathematical probability theory that accounts for learning as a process by which PRIOR KNOWLEDGE is COMPARED to CURRENTLY OBSERVED EVIDENCE

Speech and Music Perception

●Speech perception: ○DISCRIMINATION OF PHONEMES infants come into the world with the ability to perceive most, if not all, of the phonemes ○Loss of discrimination abilities for sounds NOT FOUND IN NATIVE LANGUAGE Before about 6 months of age, infants can discriminate all consonant contrasts in native and nonnative languages, but by 10 to 12 months, perception becomes more adultlike, with infants losing the ability to discriminate nonnative contrasts but maintaining the distinction between those that are native As children become more experienced with their native tongue, they lose some perceptual plasticity, becoming specialists in their own language ○PERCEPTUAL NARROWING ●Music perception: ○Preference for 'NATURAL" musical patterns Newborns also seem to know the difference between major (happy-sounding) and minor (sad-sounding) chords,