Infancy Sensory Development: Understanding the Newborn's Readiness and Perceptions

1. Chapter 5 INFANCY

2. INFANCY • Sensation: the detection of sensory stimulation • Perception: the interpretation of what is sensed

3. THE NEWBORN’S READINESS FOR LIFE • Newborn Reflexes – involuntary, automatic response to a stimuli • Survival – adaptive value, satisfy needs; • breathing, sucking, swallowing • Primitive – not as useful, disappear 1st year • Babinski, swimming, grasping

4. Table 5.1 Major Reflexes in Full-Term Neonates

5. Table 5.1 Major Reflexes in Full-Term Neonates (continued)

6. THE NEWBORN’S READINESS FOR LIFE • Infant States: six levels of arousal • Pass through predictable pattern of states • 70% of time asleep • Developmental Change in Infant States • Overall sleep decreases, duration of episodes increases • REM – declines; less need for stimulation while asleep (Autostimulation theory) • SIDS – leading cause of infant mortality

7. Table 5.2 Infant States of Arousal

8. THE NEWBORN’S READINESS FOR LIFE • Functions and Course of Crying • State communicating distress • Developmental changes in crying • Shrill and nonrhythmic may indicate brain damage • Tends to diminish after first 3 months – maturation of brain, increased responsiveness from parents

9. METHODS USED TO STUDY THE INFANT’S SENSORY/PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCES • The Preference Method • Discriminate between stimuli • The Habituation Method • Familiarity leads to a lack of response • Dishabituation – response to new stimuli

10. METHODS USED TO STUDY THE INFANT’S SENSORY/PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCES • The Method of Evoked Potentials • Present a stimulus and record brain waves • Discrimination of stimuli produces different brain wave patterns • The High-Amplitude Sucking Method • Rate of sucking on a pacifier controls the presentation of a stimuli, shows preference and discrimination

11. Figure 5.3 An EEG cap is used to place electrodes around the baby’s head to record electrode activity at appropriate places on the baby’s brain.

12. Figure 5.4 The high-amplitude sucking apparatus.

13. INFANT SENSORY CAPABILITIES • Hearing • Discriminate sounds based on loudness, duration, direction, and frequency • Prefer mother’s voice to other women • Sensitive to phonemes, even better than adults (if sounds are not part of the adult’s spoken language) • Hearing loss can adversely affect development (often due to ear infections)

14. INFANT SENSORY CAPABILITIES • Taste and Smell • Prefer sweet over sour, bitter, or salty • Avoid unpleasant odors • Recognize mother by smell (if breast-fed) • Touch, Temperature, and Pain • Touch enhances development, allows exploration of environment • Sensitive to temperature • Sensitive to pain – even at 1 day

15. INFANT SENSORY CAPABILITIES • Vision • Least mature sense • Detect changes in brightness • Can see patterns • See colors, although discrimination is good by 2-3 months • Poor acuity, see as well as adults by 12 months

16. Table 5.3 The Newborn’s Sensory Capabilities

17. VISUAL PERCEPTION IN INFANCY • Perception of Patterns and Forms • Early Pattern Perception (0 to 2 Months) • Prefer high contrast patterns • Prefer moderately complex patterns • Prefer patterns that move

18. Figure 5.5 Fantz’s test of young infants’ pattern preferences. Infants preferred to look at complex stimuli rather than at a simpler black-and-white oval. However, the infants did not prefer the facelike figure to the scrambled face. ADAPTED FROM FANTZ, 1961.

19. Figure 5.6 What patterns look like to the young eye. By the time these two checkerboards are processed by eyes with poor vision, only the checkerboard on the left may have any pattern left to it. Poor vision in early infancy helps to explain a preference for moderately complex rather than highly complex stimuli. ADAPTED FROM BANKS & SALAPTEK, 1983.

20. VISUAL PERCEPTION IN INFANCY • Later Form Perception (2 months – 1 year) • More sensitive to movement • Begin to perceive objects as whole forms • Use subjective contours • Results from interaction between vision, biological maturation, and learning

21. Figure 5.7 Perceiving objects as wholes. An infant is habituated to a rod partially hidden by the block in front of it. The rod is either stationary (A) or moving (B). When tested afterward, does the infant treat the whole rod (C) as “familiar”? We certainly would, for we could readily interpret cues that tell us that there is one long rod behind the block and would therefore regard the whole rod as familiar. But if the infant shows more interest in the whole rod (C) than in the two rod segments (D), he or she has apparently not been able to use available cues to perceive a whole rod. ADAPTED FROM KELLMAN & SPELKE, 1983.

22. Figure 5.8 By 3 months of age, infants are perceiving subjective contours such as the “square” shown here. ADAPTED FROM BERTENTHAL, CAMPOS, & HAITH, 1980.

23. VISUAL PERCEPTION IN INFANCY • Perception of Three-Dimensional Space • Size Constancy • Present at birth, not fully developed until 10 – 11 YEARS old • Movement cues important (1-3 months) • Binocular cues important (3-5 months) • Pictorial Cues (monocular) • develop by age 6-7 months

24. Figure 5.10 If infants are sensitive to the pictorial cue of interposition, they should reliably reach for the “closest” area of a visual display (left side in this example). Seven-month-olds show this reaching preference, whereas 5-month-olds do not. FROM GRANRUD & YONAS, 1984.

25. VISUAL PERCEPTION IN INFANCY • Development of Depth Perception • Use of visual cliff • Most infants at 6½ months (crawling) perceived depth • 2 month-olds showed decrease in heart rate – a sign of interest, but not fear • Experience through motor development is important

26. Figure 5.11 An infant at the edge of the visual cliff.

27. INTERMODAL PERCEPTION • Are the Senses Integrated at Birth? • Yes: reaching for objects that are seen • Yes: looking in the direction of sounds • Yes: expecting to see source of sound, or to feel objects that were reached for

28. INTERMODAL PERCEPTION • Development of Intermodal perception • 1-month-olds show weak oral-to-visual perception • 4 months – intermodal matching between vision and hearing • 4-6 months – match tactile and visual sensations

29. Figure 5.12 Mean times for infants to cross the visual cliff as a function of condition.

30. INTERMODAL PERCEPTION • Explaining Intermodal Perception • Intersensory redundancy hypothesis • Amodal detection of a stimulus aids in development and differentiation of individual senses • At birth – perception is amodal • Experiencing multimodal stimuli leads to intermodal perception

31. CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON INFANT PERCEPTION • Language – become sensitive to sounds important to specific language • English vs. Chinese and “r” and “l” • Music – familiar with own culture’s music • Western major/minor vs. Javanese scale • Growth of perceptual skills includes adding new skills and losing unnecessary ones • Culture determines which sensory inputs are distinctive and how to interpret those inputs

32. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Learning • Change in behavior that • Produces a new way to think about, perceive, or react to the environment • Is the result of experience • Is relatively permanent

33. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Habituation – process by which we stop responding to a repeated stimulus • Dishabituation – attending to a new stimulus • Developmental Trends • Possible before birth • 4 months – may take long exposure • 5-12 months – need a few seconds • 10-14 months – habituate to objects and relationships between objects

34. Figure 5.13 Support habituation and test events: Containment test events

35. Figure 5.13 Support habituation and test events: Containment test events (continued)

36. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Individual Differences in Habituation • Some habituate slowly and forget rapidly • Others habituate rapidly and forget slowly • Rapid habituation between 6-8 months • Better language skills in 2nd year • Higher IQ later in childhood

37. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Classical Conditioning • Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits an unconditioned response (UCR) • Neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with (UCS) • Eventually CS elicits a conditioned response (CR) • Possible for newborns, but must have survival value

38. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Operant Conditioning • Learner emits a response (operates on environment) • Associates this action with the consequences it produces • Repeat favorable, limit unfavorable • Newborns learn very slowly, rate increases with age • At 2 months, memory is context-dependent

39. Figure 5.14 Basic principles of operant conditioning.

40. Figure 5.15 When ribbons are attached to their ankles, 2- to 3-month-old infants soon learn to make a mobile move by kicking their legs. But do they remember how to make the mobile move when tested days or weeks after the original learning? These are the questions that Rovee-Collier has explored in her fascinating research on infant memory.

41. BASIC LEARNING PROCESSES IN INFANCY • Observational Learning – • Attend to a model and form a symbolic representation of model’s behavior • Newborn imitation – possible at 7 days old, if part of behavioral repertoire • Imitation of novel responses – reliable between 8-12 months old • Immediate imitation at first, deferred imitation later

42. Figure 5.16 Sample photographs from videotaped recordings of 2- and 3-week old infants imitating tongue protrusion, mouth opening, and lip protrusion.