PSY 254 Midterm (Lecture Review)

Why are humans born before their brains are fully developed? Why do human babies take so long to develop after birth compared to other species?

-Evolutionarily, humans are born before they are fully developed so that their heads are not too big when the mother gives birth (so she does not die during childbirth)

-We as a species are very intelligent and have big brains; the longer term of development allows us to develop more brain capacity

How do babies shape their own development?

-Different kids in different situations elicit different responses from adults and other kids

-Babies' own attention shapes their own perception, which in turn shapes cognition (Ex. Babies choose to selectively attend to people speaking, which allows them to learn language)

-Children have varied interested from infancy onwards, which leads to different expertise

What is meant by "nature" in the context of development?

-Our biological endowment; experience-independent change that occurs naturally; things that are naturally hardwired in our brain and body

-Includes genetic factors, maturational timetables (ex. growing teeth), hormonal changes (ex. menstruation), reflexes, and instincts (ex. imprinting)

What is meant by "nurture" in the context of development?

-Environment, including physical and social (womb, nutrition, school, community, etc.)

-Includes environmental factors (native language, nutrition), learning (playing piano), and effects of experience (food preferences, development of prejudice)

What is nativism?

The theory that concepts, mental capacities, and mental structures are innate rather than acquired by learning; brain maturation is what brings out these mental capacities

What is empiricism?

The theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience

What are the important things to consider when deciding whether a finding falls more in line with the theory of nativism or empiricism?

1. Age of emergence

2. Cross-cultural variation

-If a behavior/observation is more universal across children from different backgrounds, that seems to support the theory of nativism

3. Species comparisons

What are the ethical responsibilities that scientists must hold when conducting psychological studies on children and adults?

-Scientists have the responsibility to anticipate and minimize risks that children in their studies may encounter

-The risks of the study cannot be any greater than those that children may encounter in everyday life (ex. it is ethical to make a child cry in the lab because they cry everyday)

-They must make sure that the potential benefits to society that could arise from the study outweigh any potential harm to the children in the study

What is open science?

Making science accessible to anyone from beginning to end

-Includes making data publicly available so that others can check it and apply their own expertise to it

-Scientists lay our specific statistical analysis plans, results, etc.

What are WEIRD participants? Why are they problematic in current developmental psychology studies?

WEIRD = Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries

-The fact that the vast majority of psychology participants and experimenters are WEIRD is a huge bias, because this is a very specific group of people which are not representative of all of humankind; this makes it difficult to generalize the results of studies across all people

What is a correlational study?

-Involves measuring a set of variables to see if they are related

-Correlation/relationship that is found between variable in these types of study does not imply causation between those variables; there are often alternative explanations for correlations found between variables

What is a latent variable in correlational studies?

A variable that is not directly observed, but you assume it to be a cause of the observed relationship between two variables

Ex. In the case of kid shoe size being correlated with reading skill, the latent variable is age

What are some key features of experimental studies?

-Include independent variables and dependent variables

-Random assignment vs. non-random assignment to conditions

Strengths:

-Tests specific hypotheses

-Can more correctly draw causal relationships than in correlational studies; Holds other factors constant so that there are not confounding variables

Weaknesses:

-Experiments are simulations of real life

-Experimenter biases may be present

What is an independent variable in an experimental study? What is a dependent variable in an experimental study?

Independent variable = variables manipulated by the experimenter, with the intent of seeing how they affect the dependent variables

Dependent variable = behavior measured by the experimenter

-Examples include: selection of objects, ratings from 1-7, reaction time, listening/reading times, responses to questions, physiological or neural responses, etc.

In the Mean Monkey experiment, the child is asked to point to which sticker they want. The monkey then takes the sticker that the child pointed to. The purpose of the study is to see whether children will figure out that if they point the sticker that they actually don't want, they will be left with the sticker that they actually want (since the monkey takes the one that they point to). What is the research question, IV, DV, and flaws of this experiment?

-Research question: How the ability for children to manipulate someone for personal gain/ability to understand other people's perspective varies with age

-Independent variable: age

-Dependent variable: the behavior of whether the child points to the sticker that they don't want or to the sticker that they actually want

-Experimental flaw in this study is that there is a lot of dialogue, so younger children may just have a harder time paying attention (this may result in bias where the task may not actually have to do with whether children can manipulate/understand others' thoughts)

What are descriptive studies?

Careful descriptions of natural environments, which allows the study to have high ecological validity

What are longitudinal studies? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Longitudinal studies follow the same group of children over an extended period of time

Strengths:

-You can observe individual patterns of development

-You can capture change and stability

-You can measure long-term outcomes (ex. Which children graduated from high school?)

Weaknesses:

-It is expensive and grants are hard to get

-Difficult to do; takes a long time to do

-Repetition effects: if you keep repeating the same thing (e.g. giving people the same questionnaire at different points in time during the study) then the subjects might start remembering and catching on, biasing the study

What are cross-sectional studies? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Compares different groups of kids that are at different ages (ex. comparing the behavior of a group of 3-year-olds with the behavior of a group of 5-year-olds)

Strengths:

-Far more efficient than waiting years, as you must do in longitudinal studies

Weaknesses:

-Since you are testing kids from different age groups, you may get unexpected variability (because of how different young children are at different ages in terms of various cognitive abilities)

What is an APGAR test?

APGAR = Appearance, Pulse, Grimace/reflex (crying); Activity, Respiration

-Newborns get either 0, 1, or 2 points for each component of the acronym; allows doctors to assess the health of the child as soon as they are born

What are the "traditional" methods of studying development?

-Diary studies (data is self-reported by participants longitudinally — that is, over an extended period of time that can range from a few days to even a month or longer)

-Interviews

What is habituation (one of the behavioral methods used to study children)?

Habituation = showing something to babies over and over until they "habituate" to it (i.e. until they are bored); formally defined as when their looking time at a stimulus declines to half of what it was compared to the initial time

-Once the baby habituates to the given stimulus, show than something new and see if they look longer (i.e. can tell the difference between this novel stimulus and the stimulus to which they had just habituated)

-Habituation takes advantage of babies' preference for novelty

Ex. Repeat a letter sound over and over and then change it --> If the baby responds differently to the new sound you can tell that the baby can discriminate between the two sounds

What is the idea between the high-amplitude sucking procedue?

Involves attaching an electrode to a pacifier and seeing how frequently and how intensely they suck on the pacifier

-Babies tend to change their level of sucking on the pacifier depending on their interest

-Can train the babies that when they suck on the pacifier they can see or hear interesting things

What is the headturn preference procedure?

The baby learns that every time he turns his head and looks at a different light, he gets to hear cool different things

-Can measure total looking time to see what the babies prefer to listen to (the longer the looking time, the more they prefer that sound)

*Also takes advantage of the fact that we expect babies to care more about novel things

What is the looking-while-listening procedure?

Uses real-time measures of the time course of young children's gaze patterns in response to speech

-Participants look at pictures (sometimes a single picture, sometimes two to four pictures, and sometimes a complex scene), and they listen to speech that has the potential to direct their attention to some aspect of the visual scene

What are eye tracking studies?

An automated version of looking-while-listening procedure where you can see where people look second by second

-Can extract pupil size to see where people are paying attention (dilated pupils = paying more attention)

-Ex. Google used eye tracking to see where the subject looks most on the computer screen when they make a Google search

What are physiological methods of measuring children's behavior in psychology studies?

1. Measuring pupil size

-When something really engaging happens, people's pupils dilate; can use pupil dilation to tell when babies are paying attention

2. Dynamic heart rate over time

3. Cortisol levels over time

-Ex. Putting the baby in a slightly stressful situation and analyze the baby's saliva to see their hormonal levels

What is fNIRS? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

fNIRS = Functional near-infrared spectroscopy

-A method of child brain imaging using near-infrared light

-Headset is put on the child, and measures whether there is hemoglobin/blood in a particular spot, indicating brain activity (allows researchers to obtain some neural data)

Strengths:

-Unlike typical fMRI, allows the child to move around

-Has decent temporal resolution

Weaknesses:

-Does not have good spatial resolution

What is EEG? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

EEG = electroencephalography

-Measures electrical activity in the brain using electrodes attached to the scalp

Strengths:

-Has excellent temporal resolution

Weaknesses:

-Has poor spatial resolution

What is fMRI? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

fMRI = functional magnetic resonance imaging

-Measures the tiny changes in blood flow that take place in an active part of the brain

Strengths:

-Has amazing spatial resolution

Weaknesses:

-Has terrible temporal resolution

What is LENA?

LENA = Language Environment Analysis

-Involves putting a recorder in kids' pockets to provide automatic count of words

-Allows study of language development and experience

What is the benefit of the Child Language Data Exchange System?

Can analyse parent-child speech by seeing what kinds of interactions take place between parents and children across different cultures

When does life begin? When does development begin?

Life begins when one sperm cell penetrates the wall of an egg cell.

Development begins once babies start having some cognitive abilities

What is the zygote?

The first cell resulting from the fusion of egg and sperm

-The zygote is the means by which the DNA of the mother and father are combined; humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, with one chromosome in the pair being from the mother and the other being from the father

What are zygotes almost infinitely unqiue/variable?

-There are 17.6 trillion combinations of genes from the mother and father that can yield different offspring

-Crossing over of chromosomes results in nearly infinite different combinations of genes to form a unique zygote

How many weeks after gestation is the zygote considered an embryo?

4 weeks

How many weeks after gestation is the embryo considered a fetus?

9 weeks

How many weeks after gestation is a baby born prematurely likely to survive?

28 weeks

-At this point, the brain and lungs are strong enough to function, usually with some help

-However, the baby will likely face some developmental issues

Various organ systems of the unborn baby are most vulnerable during certain periods of gestation (generally 3 and 14 weeks). What is the significance of this?

Particular systems are most vulnerable (eg. to the harmful effects of teratogens) during sensitive period (specific periods of time in gestation, which are different for each system)

What are teratogens? What are their general characteristics?

-Teratogens are environmental causes of birth defects

Their general characteristics include:

-Do their damage during sensitive period (i.e. the period during which a specific system is most vulnerable during gestation); when the exposure to the teratogen happens during pregnancy matters to the type of damage it might have to the development of the baby, since different systems mature at different periods of time (and thus have different sensitive periods)

-Their damage is selective (ex. may not affect the physical body but affects cognition)

-Sleeper effects = the effects aren't apparent for years

-The more exposure to teratogens = the worse the developmental problems

What are some common examples of teratogens?

1. Alcohol

-Can result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), which is associated with facial abnormalities, slow growth, cognitive deficits, greater incidence of ADHD

2. Mercury

-Minamata disease = severe mercury poisoning

-Mercury tends to accumulate in fish, so pregnant women are advised to avoid certain fish

3. Iodine

4. Cigarettes

What are some examples of long-term effects of the prenatal environment on the child?

-Excessive maternal weight gain in pregnancy associated with obesity, diabetes, possibly some cancer

-Maternal anxiety, depression, and stress are associated with behavior challenges in child 4 years later

-Maternal stress also linked to mental illness (schizophrenia)

Explain how the Cat in the Hat study provided evidence that our experience begins prenatally.

-Researcher had mothers read Cat in the Hat aloud once a day for the last 6 weeks of pregnancy

-Just after the babies were born, they tested to see if the children preferred the Cat in the Hat over a book which had never been reading to them

-Sucking paradigm: Babies sucked on a pacifier harder and more frequently when being read the Cat in the Hat, showing that it was familiar to them and they preferred it

Within hours of birth, the babies prefer to look at intact faces than jumbled faces. What implications does this hold?

Babies preferred (i.e. looked at more) pictures of intact faces than jumbled faces merely hours after birth

-This shows that babies can clearly tell the correct orientation of faces; this is harder to ascribe to prenatal learning because there are no faces in utero (so they cannot get face experience before they are born)

-Raises the question of the nativism vs. empiricism debate: Is there some innate ability to recognize faces? Or can babies learn to recognize faces within minutes after they are born?

What are the six newborn states?

1. Drowsing

2. Active sleep

3. Quiet sleep

4. Alert awake

5. Active awake

6. Crying

*Newborns spend the majority of their day in either active sleep (8 hours) or quiet slee (8 hours)

What are the four lobes of the cerebral cortex? What are their main functions?

1. Frontal lobe: brain's "executive" center; has to do with planning and controlling impulses

2. Occipital lobe: processes visual information

3. Temporal lobe: processes auditory information; some memory (hippocampus/entorhinal cortex)

4. Parietal lobe: integrates sensory information; includes primary somatosensory cortex

What is the type of cell specialized in sending/receiving messages within the brain and between the brain and body?

Neuron

-The basic unit of the brain and entire nervous system

-The human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons

What are the three major parts of a neuron?

1. Dendrites: fibers that receive input from other cells, and take that information to the cell body as an electrical impulse

2. Cell body: contains the genetic material of the neuron; contains the nucleus and other organelles essential to the cell's survive; where important proteins and other substances are synthesized

3. Axon: part of the nerve cell that carries signals away from the cell body to synapse onto other neurons

What is a synapse?

A small juncture between the axon terminal of one neuron and the dendritic trees of the next neuron with which it is communicating; can be chemical or electrical in nature

What are neurotransmitters?

Chemical signals that allow for communication between neurons

What is the myelin sheath?

A fatty insulation covering that allows for faster propagation of signals down the axon

What is neurogenesis?

The production of cells through cell division, which is the first step in brain development

*Most of the ~100 billion neurons in the human body are created prenatally

*However, at this point (prenatally) there is only the cell body (there are no dendrites or axons until after birth)

*At birth, you have most of your neurons, but few connections between them

What is cell migration?

When neurons move to their appropriate locations

What is myelination?

The process of forming a fatty sheath around the axons of neurons

*Process starts around 4 months after conception and concludes at very late adolescence

Individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) have motor and balance difficulties, muscle weakness and numbness, and sometimes problems with vision. What is a major cause of MS?

Damage of myelin

What is synaptogenesis?

The processing of forming connections between neurons, as axons and dendritic branches of neurons grow longer (which creates many more places where neurotransmitters can be sent)

*Axons have to grow so that the right cells can communicate (possibly over very long distances)

What is synaptic pruning?

The process in which rarely used synapses are eliminated (the brain creates enormous amounts of connections via synaptogenesis and then scales them back according to experience via pruning)

*Concept of "use it or lose it"

*Pruning begins 1 or 2 years after birth for the visual cortex, but for the prefrontal cortex pruning starts a couple years later

What are the two competing theories about what really drives our brain development?

1. Pruning

-Holds that brain development is associated with pruning of unnecessary synapses and connections

-Pruning is hypothesized to increase selectivity by reducing responses to irrelevant stimuli

2. Growth

-Holds that brain development is associated with growth of dendritic arbors, synapses, and connections

-Growth is hypothesized to increase responses and selectivity to relevant stimuli

What is meant by plasticity?

The extent to which brain organization is flexible and shaped by experience

Blind individuals show activation of the visual cortex when they are processing tactile or auditory stimuli. What is the evidence of?

Plasticity/the brain being "moldable"

*This competition between brain regions based on experience shows that the brain is plastic

What is experience-dependent plasticity?

The process through which individual/idiosyncratic experiences lead to creation/reorganization of neural connections

*Sensitive/critical periods are not important for this type of plasticity

*Ex. Violinists have more tactile representation for the left hand

*Ex. Rats raised in complex environments (empty cages) have fewer synapses

What is experience-expectant plasticity?

The process through which typical brain wiring occurs, resulting from the typical human environment (i.e. the environment universal to all humans), available throughout human evolution

*The brain "expects" certain experiences (e.g. visual patterns, movement, human voices) and needs input to fine-tune the system

*This type of plasticity depends on sensitive/critical periods; the brain is especially sensitive to particular input during a particular window, and if input isn't available during that period, development is less likely to be typical

What is a sensitive/critical period?

The particular window of time when the brain is especially sensitive to particular kinds of input

*If input isn't available during its critical period, development is less likely to be typical

Explain how strabismus applies to the concept of sensitive/critical periods as it applies to experience-expectant plasticity.

-Strabismus = a condition in which the two eyes are not aligned

-The typical brain expects input from two properly aligned eyes in order to create depth perception/3D images; when one eye is out of alignment, the brain stops processing information from that eye so that it is not represented in visual cortex

What are the pros and cons of the incredible plasticity of the human brain during infancy/childhood?

-Pro: you can adapt to your environment

-Con: If the input received is atypical then development is atypical

What has formula feeding sometimes been harmful in developing countries?

Water in many developing countries is contaminated, which causes children to get sick (especially diarrhea and pneumonia)

What are some of the many advantages of breastfeeding?

-Mammals who drink the milk of their mother have better health

-New babies have practically no immune system, but breastfeeding can provide initial protection

-Promotes myelination; provides omega-3 fatty acids which are optimal for brain development

-Lower risk of obesity throughout life

What are some of the disadvantages of breastfeeding?

-Can create social tension between the mother and father

-Causes more demands on the time of the mother

-Since we live in a chemically-dependent world, the mother must be mindful of the fact that fatty tissue in the breasts store toxins

Which type of women in the United States are more likely to breastfeed?

Those with higher income/higher education

*However, in other countries, wealthy women are less likely to breastfeed and more likely to use formula

*There has been a swing toward breastfeeding in recent years due to its known health benefits

Are boys or girls more likely to suffer from childhood obesity?

Boys

What are the physical and cognitive benefits of sleep?

-~80% of growth hormones are secreted during sleep

-Children with sufficient sleep have better attention, academic performance, and fewer behavioral problems

-Memories are consolidated as we sleep; information processing is slower when we are deprived of sleep

How do sleep patterns change during the teenage years?

-Teenagers' sleep schedules are typically late to bed, late to rise

-This schedule is caused by biological changes in circadian rhythm at this point in development

-Melatonin levels are higher in the morning for teens

*A study of a high school in Minneapolis that moved back its start time showed that there were many benefits (teens were more attentive, alert, experienced less depression and irritability, etc.)

What are reflexes?

Innate, fixed patterns of action that occur in response to particular stimulation

-Can be considered "motor building blocks"

What is the value of reflexes?

-Have important adaptive, evolutionary value

-Can also be thought of as "training" that develops muscular strength and coordination; they get the organism to use motor movements that are still too difficult to do in a planned way

What is the rooting reflex?

When you stroke the cheek of a baby, they turn their head in the direction of the stroke and open their mouth

-Adaptive for finding a nipple

What is the sucking reflex?

Sucking response when roof of mouth is touched (ex. because of having an object in their mouth)

-Adaptive for feeding

What is the stepping reflex?

The baby will make walking movements (steps) when held upright under its arms, with its feet on a firm surface.

-Adaptive for walking

What is the Babinski reflex?

Stroking the sole of the foot causes the toes to fan out

-May be linked to grasping

What is the grasping reflex?

If an object touches the palm of a baby's hand, the baby will grasp it

-Precursor to voluntary grasping

What is the Moro reflex?

In response to a loud noise or falling, the baby will first extend out their legs, arms, and neck, and then rapidly bring its arms back in

-Related to clinging

What is an example of a reflex that is not motoric in nature?

When you give a baby a bitter or sour piece of food, they will make disgusted facial expressions

What are the two major types of motor skills?

1. Fine-motor skills

-Small muscle movements; involves the more precise actions that we execute

-Involves the hands/hand eye coordination

2. Gross motor skills

-Large muscle control

-Includes controlling posture, walking, jumping

*Ex. Reaching for something requires gross motor skill of the arm but fine motor skills of the fingers

How much variability is there in children reaching the motor "milestones" (e.g. sitting alone, crawling, walking alone, jumping in place)?

-It is hard to pin down what is "typical" in motor development because there is a ton of variability

-Rather than expecting their child to achieve a certain milestone by an exact age, they should be more concerned about whether their child is reaching milestones within the 90% range (Ex. Children typically are walking by 12 months, but it is considered normal as long as the child starts walking between 9-17 months)

-Although kids vary in the age in which they reach milestones, the order of when these milestones are reached is consistent; there is a predictable progression of motor milestones (ex. Every child sits before they crawl)

What are the two major hypotheses regarding why the major motor milestones are always achieved in a consistent order across babies?

1. Maturational hypothesis

2. Dynamic systems hypothesis

What is the maturational hypothesis of motor development?

-Holds that development is based on a genetic blueprint and is the same across all humans

-Holds that it is characteristic of the human genome to develop in the pattern consistent across humans

-Holds that motor skills are tied to neurological development: maturation occurs in brain regions that control voluntary movements

-Holds that experience maintains and facilitates development; not central to development, but not irrelevant (experience is considered a "backseat driver" in this hypothesis)

What were the findings of the motor experiment of twin boys Johnny and Jimmy?

Training face improvement to specific skills (e.g. swimming, roller blading), but not the central motor milestones

*The results of this experiment is consistent with the maturational view of motor development

In one study, Eastern European orphans were kept in cribs and did not have access to toys, so they lacked experience in moving. What was the outcome when these children were later adopted into Western families?

They had delays in motor development even 5 years later

What is the dynamic systems hypothesis?

-Holds that the consistent order in development of motor skills occurs (not because there is a genetic blueprint), but because abilities interact and build across systems (motor, perceptual, social, etc.)

-Milestones are achieved as multiple systems come together

-Deals with how changes arise due to interactions between systems, across milliseconds or months

-Holds that babies are active agents in their development; they try to make sense of their environment (through trial and error)

-This hypothesis is a powerful explanation for growth and change that extends well beyond the motor system

*Ex. A baby cannot roll if it does not yet have the muscle control to hold up its neck. This is a logical sequence of events; once certain milestones are achieved (ex. neck control), then other, more complex milestones can be achieved (ex. rolling over)

How does the "disappearing stepping pattern" provide evidence for the dynamic systems hypothesis of motor development?

Although the stepping pattern (babies reflexively stepping when they are held under the arms and have their feet placed on a firm surface) is present from birth, the movement goes away because the baby's legs are too heavy to move

-We know this because when a baby with heavy legs is held upright in water, the stepping pattern reemerges

-Show that it is not based on a genetic blueprint when babies start walking

How does the Velcro mitten experiment support the dynamic systems hypothesis of motor development?

When the researchers put Velcro mittens on babies and placed toys with Velcro patches in front of them, the babies showed increase interest in objects and more social interaction

-This experiment showed that motor prowess (in this case, the ability to reach to and "grasp" objects) supported greater interest in objects

*This is another example of how systems interact

Babies are now placed to sleep on their backs in order to drastically decrease the cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). What are the consequences of this for babies' motor development?

Since babies are no longer being placed on their stomachs to sleep, they are not getting as much motor training/experience in the crawling position, which is now causing babies to start crawling later.

What is the value of crawling to babies?

-Crawling allows babies to explore the world, gathering information about objects and people

-There is no "program" for crawling assembled in the genes or hardwired in the nervous system

-Crawling self-organizes as a solution to a problem (i.e. to get places, move across the room) and is later replaced by more efficient solutions

What is cruising? Early walking?

Cruising = walking while holding onto objects

Early walking = disorganized, jerky walking; baby has to recover balance with each step

What are the component skills needed for walking?

Balance

-Stepping: being able to control shifting your weight from side to side/foot to foot

-Interpreting environment (ex. Depth, slopes)

-Motivation: babies start trying to walk when they want to start getting places

-Nervous system development

-Body proportions: little babies are too fat to walk; "thunder thighs"

When babies get to different locomotion milestones, they need to re-learn balance (since each form of locomotion has different balance demands). They also need to re-learn depth, slopes, etc. from their different perspective of the environment. What experiment provided evidence for this

-What faced with a gap that a baby would avoid as an experienced sitter, a baby that is a new crawler will crawl right out the edge

-Likewise, an experienced crawler will not try to crawl over the edge; but when they start newly walking they will walk right over the edge (whereas an experienced walker will stop and not fall over the edge)

With achievement of the motor milestone of crawling comes development in emotions; we start seeing more anger and affection from the infant once they begin to crawl.

Experienced crawlers are also good at using landmarks to find a hidden toy. But they fail to use landmarks when they start walking (because of their shift in the perception of the world, they cannot immediately generalize using landmarks to a new motor skill).

What are these examples of?

The interactions that occur between the baby's different systems of locomotion and cognition (emotion in the first example, spatial skills in the second example)

-Provides further evidence for the dynamic systems hypothesis

What was William James' thinking about perception?

Said that perception, even simple perceptual abilities, must be learned through experience

What were Eleanor and JJ Gibson's thinking about perception?

-Humans evolved in a world of objects and events, and perception is essential for survival, so some perception must be innate/built in

-But learning enhances the ability to detect and interpret information from the environment

What are the sensory capabilities of fetuses?

Taste and smell

-Taste buds form at ~11 weeks following gestation

-Fetuses swallow amniotic fluid

-Newborns recognize the smell of their own amniotic fluid

Vision

-At 26 weeks, bright light changes heart rate (which indicates that they can sense the light)

Touch

-Sensory receptors are strong enough to sense and respond to touch ~6-8 weeks

*All this early sensory experience in utero gets the fetus ready for perception once they leave the room

What is the Thatcher effect?

A phenomenon where it becomes more difficult to detect local feature changes in an upside-down face, despite identical changes being obvious in an upright face

What is the visual acuity of newborns?

Babies are nearsighted (can see nearby things fairly well but farther things are blurry) because they don't yet have control over the muscles in the eyes that allow them to focus on far away things

*This is a protective mechanism preventing the new visual system from being overloaded when the babies are very young; allows the baby to see only the things that are most salient to them (Ex. the face of their caretaker when they are being held)