Research Methods in Developmental Psychology

Infants' Visual Development

• The Preferential Looking Paradigm is used to measure visual perception in infants, as it reveals what they are interested in and can see.
• Grating Acuity Test measures visual acuity in infants by presenting them with a series of black and white stripes, and the finest grating that an infant can detect indicates their visual acuity level.
• Infants typically achieve adult-like visual acuity around 6 months of age.

Motor Skill Development

• The Cephalocaudal Rule describes the tendency for motor skills to emerge from the head to the feet, meaning that infants develop head and neck control before moving down to the arms and legs.
• Newborns predominantly display reflexes, which are automatic responses to stimuli.
• The Cephalocaudal Rule is demonstrated in the development of motor skills, such as rolling, reaching, and walking.

Research Designs

• Longitudinal Research Designs involve studying the same group of infants over a long period, while Cross-Sectional Research Designs involve studying different groups of infants at different ages.
• The main difference between these two designs is the duration of the study and the number of participants involved.

Infants' Perceptual Development

• The High Amplitude Sucking Paradigm measures sucking patterns in infants to understand their perception and attention to stimuli.
• The Habituation Paradigm measures infants' ability to habituate to repeated stimuli, which reveals their ability to perceive and process information.
• Habituation is important in studying infant perceptual development because it indicates how infants process and adapt to new information.
• Perceptual development begins at birth, as infants are immediately exposed to sensory stimuli and start to process and respond to them.
• The main role of Sensation in perceptual development is to provide the foundation for perception, as it is the process by which infants detect and respond to sensory stimuli.