MT2 Development Chapter 4
what study shows that young infants are sensitive to pain; sensitive to touch; sensitive to smell
- ELBW (below 2.2 lbs) have to go through a lot of painful medical experiences so one study compared those who went through a lot of procedures, those who didn't and then full-term infants and examined their facial expressions and HR when getting a blood test done. Found that there was diminished facial response and lower HR in ELBW with lots of procedures compared to others, showing they were more used to pain and were able to sensitize to it - pre-term infants who receive massages gain more weight, spend more time awake, and display more advanced cognitive and motor skills than do normal treated preterm babies; tend to get out of hospital earlier - six day olds prefer the scent of their mother's breast pads over a stranger, they will reliably turn to their mothers if placed in between two in a crib; showing preference and thus must be able to distinguish between them as well as make associations with odors and modify their behaviour accordingly. No differences seen at 2 days of age
discuss the visual preference paradigm as a methodology to study infant perception
- Fants placed babies in a looking chamber and presenting several visual stimuli - if they spend more time looking at one pattern than another, it can be determined they can discriminate between them, if they couldn't tell the difference there should be no change in looking time between the different stimuli - Fantz put them in a small gray box with a couple openings to present the patterns and there was a peephole so he could see which way the infants look when presenting them with two different patterns. - using the visual preference paradigm he found that infants had a preference for facelike and complex stimuli (faces >newspaper > concentric > solid), allowed Fantz to infer that because they had a preference they must be able to perceive the stimuli and cannot be blind * preference as meaning perceptual bias not liking
discuss infant's core knowledge about object constancy
- Newborns possess object constancy, they know that as an object gets closer its retinal images larger, but we perceive it as getter closer rather than larger - in one study, infants were habituated to an object of a particular size, then they were shown either the same object at a different distance (further away so image is much smaller) - a new object of a different size (yet retinal image is the same) - infants remain habituated to the first object but dishabituate to the when they see the novel object; shows that they have object constancy , if they didn't they would dishabituate to the same object at a different distance and habituate to the new object that produces the same retinal image - do see differences in their implicit knowledge (as assessed by looking time and habituation) and explicit knowledge; kids will ask why planes are shrinking
discuss the violation of expectation method
- an infant's reaction to an unexpected event is used to infer what he/she knows - uses infants' looking behaviour along with preference-for-novelty and habituation/dishabituation procedures - if what they see differs from what they expect, they should look longer at this event - seem to have certain types of core knowledge (born knowing these things) and based on this knowledge, they should expect certain things to happen in certain situations and if they do not occur they will be surprised - cautious not to attribute too much in the way of sophisticated cognitition based on looking time, but if a group of infants does systematically vary between "expected and unexpected" events, seems something is going on
discuss psychological stimulus characteristics
- at around 2-4 months, psychological characteristics of a stimulus become important to infants e.g. familiarity and novelty - also shows some kind of memory for the stimulus event for it to be recognized as familiar or novel - Kagan proposed that at 2 months, infants form schemas which are sensory representations (visual) of a stimulus - the similarity of a stimulus to a previously determined stimulus will determine attention (any new stimuli they come across, they compare to their schemas to see if they will pay attention to it) - infants are most attentive to stimuli that are moderately discrepant from a schema, known as discrepancy principle. They are less attentive to stimuli that are highly familiar or highly discrepant (e.g. normal face vs. bearded face). - McCall familiarized 2-4 month old infants to stimuli and later showed them stimuli that varied in their similarity with the original (somewhat the same, moderately different, or very different) Stimuli that were highly similar, or highly discrepant to the original received less attention that those that were moderately similar or moderately discrepant (inverted U) - suggest that once infants have the ability to form long-lasting memories, they use these memories to direct their attention to stimuli that is novel to them
how do we imply that infants have category represnetation
- babies show preferences indicating that they have some form of visual memory - this implies that they form categories and thus they remember what they've seen before and they tend to group things together that they've seen before - items from similar categories are treated as being the same
discuss visual habituation; when can you use it
- can use it if infants have no preference for one stimulus over another, is useful for determining infants' discriminatory abilities when researchers are using stimuli for which the baby may not have a decided bias - an infant can habituate to a visual stimulus - the longer infants are exposed to a stimulus, the less time they will spend looking at it - habituation occurs when there is a substantial decrease in looking time following repeated presentation (presenting the same stimulus for a set amount of time for multiple trials and measuring looking time during this presentation) - habituation is often defined as when fixation to the stimulus is 50% of what it was initially (if look at it the first time for 20 s, when they look at it for only 10 it is habituation)
discuss an experiment which used the sucking response as a methodology to study infant perception
- decasper and spence had pregnant women read one of three passages aloud twice per day during the last 6 weeks of their pregnancies, then shortly after birth, headphones were placed on the infants - one of several passage could be played over the headphones - they established a baseline sucking rate on pacifer for each child while they were listening to a different passage being read. Half of the children had to increase their sucking rate to hear the passage of the mothers and hald had to decrease - infants would alter their sucking rates in order to hear the reading of the familiar passages - showed they could detect familiar auditory characteristics of the passage such as rhythm, sound pattern, etc. (even though not mother's voice) and thus familiar passages were more reinforcing then novel ones
what types of things can babies discern about faces
- evidence that newborns may be able to make discriminations between faces - one study showed that they look longer at their mother photos than at other women - another study showed 12-36 hour old infants will alter their sucking rate (either up or down from baseline) to see a photo of their mother over another women; shows the ability to distinguish between faces and a preference for mother's face - babies also show a preference for attractive faces over unattractive faces - one study had university students rate faces as unattractive or attractive of adult white women, then they measured how long babies looked at these faces. It was shown that 2/3 of infants as young as two months old will look longer at attractive faces as opposed to unattractive faces, even though they were all relatively uniform and none were extremely unattractive or attractive. This was unrelated to how attractive an infant's mother was judged to be - attractiveness bias shown to occur across age, gender, race - they may be because infants prefer upright, curvilinear, vertically symmetrical stimuli. It could be evolutionary since symmetry is both a sign of beauty, but also physical health, and thus could be important for mate selection when older - however don't see it when not upright but do see it in animal face preferences (prefer "attractive")
what is the structure of infants categories
- has been shown that infants appear to form category prototypes. Infants will form a category for the concept of birds when habituated to highly typical exemplars - the same is not the case when atypical exemplars are used - thus when they view a number of birds they will eventually form the best example of what the bird is, take out the more general concepts and come up with a general prototype. Thus birds that fit that category and thus are typical exemplars, if shown images over and over, (Such as robin, crow, act) the infants will habituate. However if you show them atypical exemplars (flamingo, ostrich, penguin) they will not habituate because they do not understand that they are part of the same category. - this may be way infants seem to develop a prototype for female faces before male faces as a result of their greater experience. Generally tend to look at female faces more than males and are better at distinguishing among them.
discuss auditory development
- hearing develope substantially in the first year but is not adultlike until about 10 years of age (more advanced than vision to begin with and then develops faster), it is functional before birth though - newborns need it to be about 15 decibels louder than normal to detect it but they are good at localizing the sound - auditory perception is well-developed in newborns, particularly at high-frequencies i.e to mom's voice in motherese - one study showed that 1-3 day old infants will alter their sucking rates to hear a tape recording of their mother;s voice as opposed to that of a stranger (Will increase or decrease compared to baseline); so at less than 1 week old shown to recognize their mother's voice (and smell) - other research had the mother recite a rhyme in-utero during 3rd trimester to the child for a set amount of time, then go into lab and place a HR moniter and a speaker over the stomach. Over the speaker a different voice will say a different rhyme and the babies HR stays the same but when a different voice says the mother's ryhme the HR decreaes. - shows that learning def occurs before birth - This is simialir to earlier work done which on infants and sucking rates which shows they are capable of learning prenatally ; decasper and spence had pregnant women read one of three passages aloud twice per day, then shortly after birth, headphones were placed on the infants. One of several passage could be played over the headphones based on sucking rates. They established a baseline sucking rate on pacifer for each child while they were listening to a different passage being read. Half of the children had to increase their sucking rate to hear the passage of the mothers and hald had to decrease. Infants would alter their sucking rates in order to hear the reading of the familiar passages - showed they could detect familiar auditory characteristics of the passage such as rhythm, sound pattern, etc. (even though not mother's voice)
what is a contradictory evidence to notion of support and object continuity and cohesion principles in evidence, what is suggested in the end
- however there is contradictory eveidence, because on a similair task 2 year old children will fail. A ball is down dropping behind onto stage behind a screen a few times and afterwards the screen is removed to show the ball resting on the stage floor. Then a cup is placed on the floor, a shelf over that cup, and then a second cup on the shelf, the shelf is covered with screen and the ball is dropped and kids are asked to go get the ball. 40% of 2 yr olds looked in top cup (60% bottom) while 95% of 2.5 looked in top cup. Thus many two year olds did not seem to understand that objects support each other and are thus solid - yet this notion is underdeveloped at first and later becomes enriched with experience - perhaps the difference in the nature of the tasks, explains these findings, that is 2 yr old need to demonstrate an explicit understanding (have to find ball in cup) of spatial relations whereas infants only need to display an implicit understanding (just measure looking time) so you could have an incomplete, implicit understanding and still pass the test - thus 6 months old may have an implicit understanding but it takes awhile for this understanding that objects are solid and require support to fully develop
in terms of object continuity and cosheion, discuss a study that investigated whether infants understood the notion of support and what it suggests
- show two images, one is possible, where one box rests upon a platform and is pushed by a gloved hand along the platform but the box stops while it is firmly still atop the platform; other one is impossible in that the top box is slid off of the original box and hangs in midair (15% of it supported on the edge of the box) - this a typical violation of expectation study - for 3 month olds were are not surprised by the impossible outcome - by 4.5 months the amount of contact with the platform became important - for 6.5 months who expect the box to fall unless a large portion maintains contact with the platform, they are suprised - initially, infants believe that any contact between two objects is enough to support the other, they progress until they reach an adult-like concept of support; develops gradually over infancy
discuss infant's core knowledge about object continuity and cohesion ; example
- idea that individual objects are seen as cohesive wholes with distinct boundaries - tested this ability in 4 months olds - habituated them to the image of a stick moving back and forth underneath a bar; did one condition with habituation + 2 object test (2 sticks) other with habituation with 1 object test (one stick underneath a bar) - then the condition 2 group is shown either a full stick or two sticks - 4 month do not dishabituate or recover their response for the stick (condition 2), see it as an old stimulus, showing they expected that the stick was actually a whole object. They do dishabituate to the two stick (condition 1) and see it as an new stimulus however because they see it as being different and thus it is unexpected ; however this only happens if the object is moving and not if it is stationary - been shown that 2-4 months old refer object continuity in some situations but not in others - new borns don't appear to be with continuation - won't show the same response but will increase their attention to the solid bar
discuss visual dishabituation; what does it show, discuss a study
- if a new stimulus (after repeated presentation of the same stimulus) is then presented, the infant may show a sudden increase in looking time, this is known as dishabituation - it shows that the infant can discriminate between the two stimuli (the habituated one and the new one) and it also indicated that infants can remember the earlier stimuli (or less they would not be able to discriminate between the two) - so tells us about their visual and their memory capabilities - one study presented the infants with a standard stimulus (2x2 grid) for 60s a trial for 8 trials where they received habituation, then they presented a novel stimulus (12x12) and looking time went up, see it in 1-3 day old infants (but high drop out rates in study so may not be fully developed until several weeks after birth) - using this paradigm, Frantz found evidence that 1-3 day old infants will habituate and dishabituate to visual stimuli, showing that newborns are capable of visions and have a visual memory
discuss 2 experiments that shows support for ordinality at a very young age
- infants as young as 10 months can distinguish between 2 boxes containing different amounts of crackers, you set the infants back and then start putting animals crackers in two different boxes and then you let them go to see which box they go to. They seem to go reliably with the box with more crackers as long as there were less than 4 crackers in the box with the greater quantity, this shows that they do have some concept of ordinality but it is very rudimentary - infants as young as 6 months old have also been shown to be able to tell the difference between two arrays (with > 4 items) on a computer screen as long as the ratio is large. You show them two separate computer screens and a hidden observers looks to see which one they prefer, idea is that they prefer more complex patterns so they should prefer the array with more dots, and they will prefer his array but only if the ratio between them is 2x1, otherwise their ordinality is not good enough to tell the two apart (has to be 12 vs 24 rather than 10 vs 14)
discuss one experiment that acts as new evidence for object permanenceusing the violation of expectation method
- infants as young as 3.5 months possess more knowledge than Piaget proposed, some theorists even believe object permanence is innate but it just takes a while to show it - baillargeon studied this using the violation of expectation method: draw bridge study. 3.5-4.5 month old infants were habituated to a screen moving 180 degrees in space, a colourful block then placed behind the screen to produce an impossible event. The screen started to rotate up exactly as in the habituation trials and thus obscured the wooden block from infant sight but once it got to the upright position the experimenter removes the block and it looks as if the screen is passing through the box. There is also a possible event, where the screen hits the block and then stops, and then there is a control condition for each of these events with no block (screen goes 180 degrees, screen goes 112 degrees and stops) - no differences were found for the control condition, but in the experimental condition, infants looked longer at the impossible event - they believed the block continued to exist when it was out of their sight and were surprised when the screen dropped. They thus have knowledge of object permanence as well as that one solid cannot pass through another - differences may be seen because this is an implicit measure of object permanence and they do not have to reach out and grab the object, just looking time
discuss the development of speech perception ; in what way is it better to adults
- infants can make phoneme discriminations that adults can not make - they can make discriminations in foreign languages that adults can not make (english-speaking family baby can discern czech phonemes), and can even do it by site alone - however this(theses) ability is quickly lost if they rarely hear these sounds - at the same time, they are able to make increasingly fine discriminations between phonemes in their mother tongue (start to notice the slight pauses between words, understand it is not just a string of sounds, recognize stress patterns) - this language flexibility (foreign language phoneme discrimination) is probably not adaptive after a certain age (the brain should dedicate neurons to processing sounds in the language it is exposed to/ it is going to speak, gives less diversity but more proficiency) but bilingual children will be able to distinguish between a broader range of phonemes than monolingual children - this develops slowly, infants are able to recognize frequently heard sound pattern at least by 4.5 months of age (know their own names), spend more time listening to their own names (turned head) relative to other names whether or not the other names had a similar or different stress pattern
discuss the development of visual perception
- infants can perceive light (pupillary reflex) but because of poor accommodation, much of what they see is blurry (don't have much control over lens initially and cannot focus the light) - accommodation is adult-like at 3 months - newborns can track a moving object, but the eyes do not always move in harmony, sometime have odd movements - convergence (both eyes looking at the same object) and coordination are adult-like by 6 months but are not seen in newborns
discuss infant's core knowledge
- infants possess knowledge - they are born with a small set of distinct systems of knowledge that have been shaped by natural selection and upon which new skills and belief systems are built - according to Spelke, there are 3 core knowledge systems in infancy -> object representation, knowledge of people and actions, ability to represent numbers or quantities - geary too said there was a small set of skeletal competencies (folk physics, biology, and psychology) - see commonalties of early developing abilities with other species, especially those closely related to humans, supports the idea that each system has a phylogenetic history
discuss the development of face processing, why would a bias be adaptive, study
- infants prefer vertical, symmetrical stimuli with curved lines making them well-suited to attend to faces, infants initially have a weak bias but it gets stronger (6 month and adult process upright and inverted faces differently, adult only show it for humans, 6 month for monkeys too) - a bias to human faces would make evolutionary sense and would facilitate strong social attachment (will have interactions where they stare at mother's face which will facilitate a strong bond, also important so they can recognize the mother) - one study showed newborns paddle stimuli which resembled faces, did not resemble faces or were blank. They presented these stimuli and moved them away from the infants and measured how much infants followed the stimuli by moving their eyes as well as their head - following this paradigm, infants will show a preference for face-like stimuli as early as 5 days of age - suggests that neonates find slowly moving faces with high contrast definition particularly attractive - this does not mean that they understand the conceptual meaning of a face though
discuss the old view (Piaget's) of object permanence development
- it is the understanding that objects continue to exist when they can not be perceived - according to piaget, until 4 months of age, objects exist merely as extensions of their perceptions or actions upon them; only when you can look at it, hear it, etc. - at 4 months, they will retrieve an object that "disappears" is it is still partially visible but they will not search for a completely hidden toy (partially covered by a cloth - but will reach for it at the end of the stage if they already are reaching for it when it is hidden) - at 8 months they will retrieve a completely hidden toy yet they can not solve the A not B task (will look in the first hiding place even if they observe you moving it) - at 12 months, they can solve the A not B task but cannot do invisible displacement, e.g. puts a potato in a small wooden box but then he puts it underneath a rug, subtly tips potato out and then gives child the box, the child will not look under the rug for the potato; need to be able to mentally represent objects which piaget argues doesn't form until 18 months
discuss the basic perceptual abilities of young infants
- it was once thought that infants were born deaf and blind and with limited pain sensitivity - although far from mature, all of the infants senses are functioning (they prefer some signs, smell, and sounds over over) - also been shown that infants are sensitive to pain --> ELBW infants' response to pain is affected by repeated painful episodes - vision and hearing develop rapidly over the first year - partially because it is so poor when we are born, lots of grouns to gain - tactile stimulation is very important to infants as well - the chemical senses (taste and smell) develop early and are well developed shortly after birth
how do you measure categorization; two experiments
- often measure using habituation/dishabituation - stimuli are varied slightly during habituation trials e.g. when habituating infants to faces, multiple faces can be used but infants will still show decreased looking times - one study did this was 30 week olds and they discovered that infants can form a human face category and that the human face category is distinct from other perpetual categories. If you present them with a different face on each trial and measure how long they look at it, change stimulus but keep it within the same category (e.g. female faces) then they will eventually habituate even though they are different, showing that each stimuli is seen as being from the same category - it has been shown that infants as young as 3 months old can form categories and organize objects into perceptual categories. One study had infants habituated to either a series of horses or cats, following habituation shown a pair of new pictures, one from habituated category and one from a different but related category (giraffe zebra). Both the pictures were "new" in that they had never been seen before, found that they did not look long at the horse picture but did at the giraffe, shows that babies were able to form horse, giraffes, zebras and cats which were all distinct. Were not able to distinguish between cats and female lions initially but with more experience they were able to make the distinction
discuss the development of speech perception ; how do infnats seen biologically preprared to learn language; experiment
- shown infants at birth prefer listening to language relative to comparable complex non language sounds - may have a bias for learning speech - infants can perceive most and perhaps all phonemes found in all human languages (phonemes = basic units of speech) shows biological preparation to learn language - one study repeatedly presenting 1 MO with a phoneme along the ba or pa continuum until they showed a decrease in sucking rate (i.e. habituation) - researchers then replaced the phoneme with another example along the ba/pa continuum, the infants would show an increase in sucking rate (dishabituate) if the sound was past the dividing line on the continuum - the infants dishabituated at the same dividing line as older children and adults discriminated between two phonemes, showing infant ability to discriminate between phonemes is about as effective as adults
what are the arguments against children having core knowledge
- some researchers argue that it is not necessary to use innate knowledge of objects to explain infants' looking behaviour, infants acquire object knowledge through perceptual experience so this perceptual processing (looking at the stimulus to understand it and form a memory of it) could produce the looking patterns that others may interpret as innate knowledge. - perceptual processing also takes time so novel events (in violation of expectation or habituate/dishabitaute) simply take longer to process because the initial encoding of the stimuli needs to be done, this take time and thus results in longer looking time at novel events - does not show infant's knowledge of physical laws but rather how infant perception and memory work
what visual preferences for physical characteristics do infants have at 3-4 months
- start to show a preference for vertical symmetry at 4 months (right side and left side are the same). found that they acquire information about vertically symmetrical stimuli more effectively as reflected by faster habituation rates than to asymmetrical or horizontal information - they prefer to process stimuli that are vertical and symmetrical as opposed to asymmetrical and horizontal stimuli (upright) - curvature, or curvilinearity is also import to infants: Fantz demonstrated that infants sometimes prefer curved stimuli over linear stimuli (such as bull's eye pattern) - been shown that as young as 3-4 months of age, infants prefer the curvilinear and concentric stimuli - even newborns prefer curvature
discuss the changing preferences for visual stimuli in infants
- there are instances when infants prefer similar not novel stimuli - generally, young infants prefer familiar stimuli then show no preference, then they prefer novel stimuli - takes time to create schemas, need to see a number of examples to establish the schema so prefer familiar stimuli until schemas are well developed, once it is developed they prefer things that are slightly different
what are certain methodologies to study infant perception
- to assess infant perception, we must observe a behaviour that an infant can control and use that to infer perception (e.g. for door study take advantage of infants' abilities to turn their heads one direction or another - once such method is through the sucking response and thus measuring infants' sucking rates - visual preference paradigm, looking chamber and presenting several visual stimuli; if they spend more time looking at one pattern than another, it can be determined they can discriminate between them
discuss the development of visual preferences up to 2 months of age
- until 2 months of age, an infant's visual preferences are affected by physical properties of the stimulus (as opposed to psychological things) - babies prefer moving stimuli (sucked on a nipple while watching a light display. Bbabies decreased their sucking on these trials relative to those when the light did not move, indicating increased attention to moving light, show them a range of light in a triangle pattern, or present them so the lights come on one at a time creating the illusion of a moving triangle and sucking response almost completely stopped and is much lower than when the light did not move - infants prefer high contrast stimuli over low contrast stimuli (a visual scanning seach of 1 week infants had them put in a looking chamber and show them a high contrast image - black triangle over white rectangle- record their eye patterns and contrast to those when triangle is not visible, it has been shown that what they look at most is the high contrast edges , vertices of the triangle- where the black meets the white) - infants at 1 month of age focus their attention primarily on the outside of a figure - like edges in general. This is the Externality effect where they look at edges and won't look as much inside the face as a two month old will. By 2 months however they will fixate more on internal-stimulus features
discuss the development of visual perception, discuss structures and discrimination abilities
- vision is poor at birth because the fovea is underdeveloped (point on the retina where vision is sharpest. Packed with cones; 1mm in diameter) - the infant fovea is larger than an adults but contains large less densely packed cones - other cones haven't migrated yet - and they are less sensitive to light as a result - newborns can discriminate between red and white if matched in terms of brightness but can not differentiate blue, green, and yellow from white (only detect differences in brightness). Seem to process the colour information in the same way as adults but their colour vision itself is very poor, much better by 4 months - so overall can track a moving object, discriminate differences in light, and differences in contrasting colours at birth
how do you test infants' visual acuity and what is it
- visual acuity of newborns is 20/600 to 20/400 - they can see at 20 feet what an adult can see at 600-400 feet away. - acuity seems to be very poor at birth but increases substantially over the first year but does not reach adult levels until 6 - can be tested using forced -choice preferential looking - infants are presented with rectangular cards that contain black and white stripes on one side of a central peephole while the other side is blank (tell acuity cards) - given an infants preference for patterned stimuli over unpatterned stimuli, if they can detect the stimulus they will fixate on it - a naive observer must determine the location of the stripes based on the fixation of the child - force choice preferential learning, tester does not know what side the stripes are on so they rotate the card a few times and watch the child's eyes to figure out what side the stripes are on -the thinnest stripewidth at which the observer can determine the location of the stripes provides a measure of visual acuity
discuss infant's core knowledge in object representation ; example
- what infants know about the nature of objects - have to recognize a least 3 features related to objects: object constancy, object continuity and cohesion and object permanence - object constancy refers to the fact that an object does not change size or shape depending on how one views it - object continuity and cohesion refers to the fact that individual objects are seen as cohesive wholes with distinct boundaries - object permanence refers to the fact that objects are permanent in time and space, whether we are perceiving them or not (that is, objects continue to exist even if they are out of sight) - infant's also said to possess principle of persistance
what is one question that arises about infant categorization
- whether these categories exist when they enter the lab, or can infants merely distinguish the necessary physical features necessary to discover the categories in the experimenters' minds? - argued that it is probably a bit of both, when younger probably pick up more at the lab but when older may older have this category formed
discuss a study that shows that infants have core knowledge in simple arithmetic ; critiques
- wynn used the violation of expectation method to show that infants can add and subtract small quantities (puppets) - infants watched as a screen moved in front of a small doll, when the screen dropped some infants some infants saw two dolls and some saw just one - done with infants as young as 5 months of age, will look at the impossible outcome (2 dolls) for a long time, seems to suggest that they have rudimentary ideas about addition, must infer that the second item was added without seeing it actually being added - however it is not clear what is going on in this experiment, the infants may to be responding to number, but the total amount of substance present, so thus they may not be displaying mental math and thus 1+1=2 but rather thinking that there "should be more stuff here" which would be based on ore perceptual than conceptual relations - either way is rudimentary in infants
discuss more evidence for object permanence at a younger age
-Newcombe a toy was buried in a sandbox in front of 5 month olds and then dug out 10 seconds later, this was done 4x and looking time was measured - after multiple trials the object was dug out from 6 '' away - infants looked significantly longer at these trick trials and they weren't surprised when a different object was dug out of this location, and this thus shows evidence for object permanence but with the importance being on spatiotemporal characteristics and not shape and colour - even when using the traditional A not B task, infants as young as 7.5 months will search correctly on B trials as long as the delay is short; suggesting that their lack of inhibition or memory, not their lack of object permanence, is the cause - some studies show that infants' understanding of the permanence of objects gradually develops as infants acquire stronger mental representations of objects through experience. 7.5 have to retrieve am object hidden under a cloth for either familiarized items or novel objects. Tested for their preference (reaching for object when uncovered) and for their understanding of object permanence (reaching for object when covered). When visible, almost always reached for the novel items showing a classic novelty bias, but when hidden more likely to reach for familiar. Argue had a stronger mental representation for familiar object and thus showed greater sensitivity for its continued existence (object permanence for familiar over novel) - puppet study also evidence for object permanence
if an object is hidden in one location and then later moved to a second, all while the child is watching, the infants searches in the first location and is surprised not to find the desire object there
A-not-B object permanence test
focusing of the lens
accommodation
an abstract representation of a category
category prototype
an abstract representation of a category. A best example of a category
category prototype
ability to have both eyes looking at the same object
convergence
both eyes following a moving stimulus is a coordinated fashion
coordination
infants are born with a small set of distinct systems of knowledge that have been shaped by natural selection over evolutionary times and upon which new flexible skills and belief systems will be later built
core knowledge
infants are most attentive to stimuli that are moderately discrepant from a schema
discrepancy principle
following habituation, a new stimulus is presented that increases the level of responding
dishabituation
when infants direct their visual attention primarily to the outside of a figure and spend little time inspecting internal features; develops at 1 month of age
externality effect
the decrease in response to a stimulus as a result of repeated presentations of that stimulus
habituation
the ability to determine the number of items in a set without counting
numerosity
what early number concepts are seen as core knowledge
numerosity, ordinality, counting and simple arthmetic
knowledge that an object remains the same despite changes in how it is viewed
object constancy
individual objects are seen as cohesive wholes with distinct boundaries
object continuity and cohesion
refers to the fact that objects are permanent in time and space, whether we are perceiving them or not (that is, objects continue to exist even if they are out of sight)
object permanence
a basic understanding of more or less than
ordinality
increasing ability to discriminate between faces of their own race
other-race effect
basic units of speech
phonemes
objects not only exist continuously and remain cohesive they also retain their individiual properties - cannot go through a spontaneous or uncaused change in the course of an event
principle of persistance
representation of an event that preserves temporal and spatial arrangement of its distinctive elements without necessarily being isomorphic with the event; mental representation
schema
what are some basic cognitive abilities to study in infant development - what is one ability that seems to cross over from perceptual to cognitive
understanding of objects, qualities and abilities to form categories - discriminating between different faces
an infant's reaction to an unexpected event to infer what he or she knows
violation-of-expectation method
what is the most studied sense in psychology
vision
placed babies in a looking chamber and a series of visual stimuli is placed in front of the infants eye while an observer records which stimuli the infants' look at the most
visual preference paradigm
