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What does 'habituation' in infant perception refer to?
Which of the following best describes a 'schema' in the context of infant perception?
What is a common limitation of using preferential looking as a method for testing infants?
Which neonatal reflex is not typically associated with touch in infants?
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What is indicated by infants altering their sucking patterns on different pacifiers?
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What is the approximate visual acuity of a newborn?
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At what age does visual acuity typically reach adult levels?
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Which aspect of color perception can newborns distinguish?
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What does the term 'hue' refer to in the context of color vision?
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Which of the following developments comes after visual acuity in infancy?
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What is the primary difference between sensation and perception?
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Which of the following correctly describes 'affordances' in perceptual development?
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According to Piaget, how does perception develop?
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What is a common misconception regarding perceptual abilities in children?
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How do nativist accounts explain perceptual development?
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What role does intelligence play in Piaget's theory of perception?
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Which cue is essential to the development of vision in infants?
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What does the concept of intermodal perception refer to?
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At what age are infants typically able to group colors into basic categories?
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Which skill improves with binocular vision development in infants?
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What visual preference do newborns show according to research?
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When do infants begin to take in features inside a pattern?
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What ability do newborn infants possess regarding shape perception?
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When are infants almost as capable as adults in seeing a unified pattern in a moving image?
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Which visual ability continues to develop until about 11 years of age?
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How do infants demonstrate a preference for moving objects?
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At what age do infants begin to show a preference for human face patterns over other stimuli?
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What method was used to demonstrate depth perception in infants at 6 months?
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By what age do infants first appear to be sensitive to kinetic depth cues?
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Which of the following is a method that infants use to detect depth by 3 months of age?
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What visual behavior do 1-month-old infants exhibit concerning faces?
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What kind of sensory integration can infants demonstrate as early as 1 month?
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At what age do infants begin to respond to pictorial depth cues?
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Which observation indicates a mismatch in sensory information for infants?
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Study Notes
Sensation and Perception
- Sensation involves detecting a stimulus through our sensory systems whereas perception involves interpreting these sensations, making sense of them.
- We study perception to understand how we make meaning from the world around us, particularly in infancy and childhood.
Theories of Perceptual Development
- Nativist accounts suggest that inherent perceptual structures exist in the world, allowing us to directly perceive information.
- Constructivist accounts propose that perception is a process of constructing meaning from sensory input, based on innate abilities and experience.
Piaget's Theory
- Piaget distinguishes between perception, an innate process, and perceptual activity, an intellectual refinement of initial impressions based on experience.
- He argues that perception develops alongside intelligence, and perception relies on cognitive processing.
Gibson's Theory
- Affordances are the functional properties of objects that suggest their potential uses.
- Invariances are consistent features of the environment that help us perceive and understand the world.
- Schemata are mental representations that guide our understanding of the environment.
Studying Infant Perception
- Preferential looking tests an infant's ability to distinguish between stimuli by observing their gaze preference for one item over another.
- Habituation-recovery assesses an infant's learning by repeatedly presenting a stimulus until their interest wanes, then introducing a novel stimulus to measure renewed interest or lack thereof.
Limitations of Studying Infant Perception
- Both preferential looking and habituation-recovery techniques are limited by the infant's potential attention span and their ability to express their preferences or learning.
Development of the Senses
- Touch: Infants display reflexes such as rooting and babinski and are sensitive to temperature. Kangaroo contact is beneficial for pre-term and low-birth-weight babies.
- Taste: Pre-term infants taste preferences are influenced by the flavors their mother consumes during pregnancy.
- Smell: Newborns can distinguish their mother's scent over other scents.
- Hearing: Infants show a preference for organized sounds, like speech and music, and can effectively locate sound sources.
- Vision: Develops over the first few years of life.
Visual Acuity
- Newborn vision is about 20/600, meaning they see at 20ft what a person with 20/20 vision sees at 600ft.
- Acuity improves over time, reaching adult levels by age 5.
- Visual accommodation, the ability to adjust the lens to focus on varying distances, is present in newborns.
Colour Vision
- Hue is the wavelength of light that distinguishes one colour from another.
- Newborns can distinguish brightness but not hue.
- Children develop colour vision in stages:
- At 2 months: Can discriminate colour.
- At 3 months: Can group colors into basic categories.
- At 4 months: Perceive colours similarly to adults.
Pattern Perception
- Contrast sensitivity refers to the ability to distinguish differences in brightness within a visual pattern.
- Infants show a preference for patterns over plain stimuli and complex patterns over simpler ones.
- During the first few months, infants focus on edges and boundaries, then progress to features inside the pattern.
Object Perception
- Size constancy is the ability to perceive an object's size as constant regardless of distance. This is present at birth and develops as binocular vision improves.
- Shape constancy is the ability to perceive objects' shapes as consistent even when their retinal image changes due to movement. This too is present at birth.
Face Perception
- Infants have a natural preference for human faces over other stimuli.
- Even newborns show preference for their mothers' faces.
- By 1 month, infants scan the edges of faces, focusing on the contrast between skin and hair, and by 2-3 months, they scan the interior of the face.
Depth Perception
- Visual Cliff task: 6-month-olds are hesitant to cross a visual cliff, demonstrating an understanding of depth.
- Kinetic depth cues: These are clues provided by the motion of objects in our visual field, providing information about distance. 3-month-old infants are responsive to these cues.
- Retinal Disparity: This refers to the slight differences in images each eye receives, allowing perception of depth. 3-month-olds use retinal disparity to perceive depth.
- Pictorial depth cues: These are cues artists use to portray depth in 2D art, such as perspective. 7-month-olds show responsiveness to these cues.
Intermodal Perception
- This involves integrating sensory information from multiple modalities at once, forming a whole view of an object, and experiencing distress when sensory input is mismatched.
- Infants demonstrate intermodal perception by linking lip movements with sound, or by associating puppets' movement with rhythm.
- Infants also integrate tactile and visual information, preferring to explore objects that they have previously felt with their hands, suggesting they're gathering sensory information.
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Description
Explore the intricate concepts of sensation and perception, focusing on how we detect and interpret stimuli through our senses. This quiz dives into different theories of perceptual development, including nativist and constructivist perspectives, and discusses pivotal theories by Piaget and Gibson. Understand the relationship between perception, cognitive processing, and the world around us.
