Exam 2 Study Guide - Child Psych

Sensation

Sensation

The processing of basic information from the world through the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc.)

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information about objects, events, and the world around us

Visual Acuity

Determines how sharply or clearly infants can see

Examples of Visual Acuity

Adults and Children: Eye Charts

Infants: Pattern Distinction

Least matured sense of a newborn that improves rapidly in first months and reaches adult level by 6 months

Vision

If an adult can see at 600ft, an infant can see at…

20 ft

Cone Cells

Light-sensitive neurons highly concentrated in the fovea, involved in seeing fine details and color

What are cone cells involved in

Seeing fine details and color

What are the differences between an adult’s cone cells and an infant’s?

Infant cone cells are spaced 4 times farther apart than adults and cannot percieve color in the first few months

What hues do infants prefer?

Unique hues like blue

Fovea

The central region of the retina, responsible for sharp vision

What are the differences between an adult’s fovea and an infant’s?

Infants foveas catch 2% of light, compared to 65% for adults

Retina

Light-senstive layer of tissue at the back of the eyeball that images come through to create the image you see

What vision to babies have a birth?

20/120 vision

Preferential Looking Technique (Fantz)

Two different visual stimuli are displayed side by side. If an infant looks longer at one of the two stimuli, the researcher can infer that (a) the baby can discriminate between them, and (b) the infant prefers one over the other

Modern Technique for the Preferential Looking Technique

• Modern versions use automatic eye trackers

  • Use a camera that mesaures eye movements via infrared light reflection

  • Head-mounted infant-eye trackers that show where infants are looking as they move their eyes freely around the room.

Pattern Perception

Newborns prefer patterns with high contrast over plain stimuli due to their inability to see small features. Older infants prefer more complex patterns

Contrast Sensitivity

Infants can detect a pattern only when it is composed of highly contrasting elements.

Perceptual Constancy

The perception of objects as being of constant size, shape, color, etc., despite phsycial differences in the retinal image of the object

Is Perceptual Constancy dependent on experience?

No

Example of Perceptual Constancy

A door opening and closing

Object Segregation

The identification of seperate objects in a visual array

Is object segregation dependent on experience?

Yes, experience with specific objects helps infants understand their physcial properties

Common Movement

The perception of objects moving together in the same direction, speed, or pattern, aiding in the organization and recognition of objects in the visual field.

Depth Perception

The ability to judge distance between objects and ourselves, using cues like optical expansion and binocular disparity

What are the depth cues used by infants?

Optical Expansion

Binocular Disparity

Stereopsis

Monocular/Pictorial Cues

Optical Expansion

The visual image of an object increases in size as the object comes toward us, occluding more in the background

• By 1 Month

Binocular Disparity

The closer the object, the more diiferent retinal images of it from the two eyes will be

Stereopsis

The process by which the visual cortex combines the different neural signals from each eye to create depth perception

• By 4 Months

Monocular/Pictorial Cues

The perceptual cues of depth that can be achieved by one eye alone (e.g., relative size, interposition)

• By 6-7 Months

Visual Cliff Study

Based on the visual cliff apparatus, It involved a glass-covered platform with a shallow and deep side to see if infants would perceive the drop and hesitate to cross, indicating depth perception development.

• Showed depth perception develops within 1-2 months after baby begins to crawl

What is the most developed sense at birth?

Hearing

Auditory Localization

the perception fo the spatial location of a sound source in which newborns turn towards a sound

• Improves with growth

Infants can discriminate sounds by…

• Volume

• Duration

• Pitch

Infants prefer listening to…

“baby talk,” their mothers voice over unfamiliar adults, and their native language

Innate taste and smell responses in infancy

• Sweet taste (preferred) → relaxed facial muscles

• Sour taste → pursed lips

• Sweet vs. Rotten smell → Happy vs. Unhappy expression

Prentatal taste experiences

• Early exposure to bitter flavors increase likelihood of preference for those flavors

• Prenatal exposure to garlic → more likely to like garlic

Newborn Smell Preference

• Prefer smell of mother’s breast milk

  • Can distinguish it

Intermodal Perception

Combining information from multiple sensory systems to aid in perception, like recognizing objects by sight and sound, sucking on a pacifier without seeing it and able to recognize it once visible

Why does Intermodal Perception help with perception?

Easier for infants to detect changes in stimulation that occur at the same time in two modalities

Piaget's Constructivist Approach

Children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences (“Little Scientists”)

Schemas

Organized unit of knowledge used to understand and respond to situations, considered a set of linked mental representations

Mental Representations

Internal depictions of information the mind can manipulate

Assimilation

Incorporating new information into existing concepts

Assimilation Example

Calling a zebra a horse

Accommodation

Adjusting existing concepts in response to new experiences

Accommodation Example

Creating a new schema for zebras

Equilibration

Balancing assimilation and accommodation for stable understanding of schemas

Equilibration Phases

• People are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomenon

• New information leads them to perceive that their understanding is inadequate

• Develop a more sophisticated understanding

Are Piaget’s stages continuous or discontinuous?

Piaget’s stages are discontinuous because moral judgements change based on age

Invariant Sequence

Everyone progresses throught the stages in the same order without skipping any of them

Broad Applicability (Piaget)

Characteristic of each stage influences children’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts

Sensorimotor Stage

Birth to 2 years, characterized by sensory and motor skills development, object permanence, and deferred imitation

Basic Reflex Activity

Proficient in innate reflexes

• Birth - 1 month

Primary Circular Reactions

Infants produce repetitive behavioris focused on own body

• 1 month - 4 months

• Ex: Sucking thumb

• Pleasureable response to chace event → repeated occurrence

• Lacks object permanence, but begin to search for objects the disappear from sight

Secondary Circular Reactions

Repetitive behaviors now focused on external objects

• 4 - 8 months

• Behaviors still not intentional

• Can imitate familiar, but not novel, behaviors

Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions

Schemas can be comined into complex sequences

• 8 - 12 months

• Ex: hitting + reaching + grasping

• Behavior intentional and goal-directed

• Gain object permance but show A-not-B error

Teritary Circular Reactions

Toddlers experiment with external objects

• 12 - 18 months

• Use of actions not previously linked to the objects variation → new outcomes

• Improved problem solving

• Display accurate A-B Search

Mental Representation

Reach ability to “think” before you act

• 18-24 months

• Arrival at solutions suddently suggests mental representation of different actions

• Deffered imitation appears

• Leads to development of make-believe play

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible

A-not-B Error

a phenomenon observed in infants where they continue to search for an object in the initial hiding place (A) even after seeing it being hidden in a new location (B)

Deferred Imitation

the ability to observe and remember another person's actions and then imitate those actions after a delay

Preoperational Stage

2-7 years, marked by large increases in mental rep., symbolic representation, egocentrism, and animistic thinking

Outcomes of Make Believe Play (Preoperational Stage)

• Reinforces Schemas

• Kids become detached from real-life conditions

• Kids become less self-centered

• Involves more complex cominations of schemas

Symbolic Representation

The use of one object, word, or thought to stand for another.

Snoopy Study

• Hiding a snoopy doll in a scale model of a room and then hiding a bigger snoopy doll in an identical room

• Older kids could find it, younger kids couldn’t

• Demostrates dual representation

Dual Representation

Viewing a symbolic object as an object and a symbol

Limitations of Preoperational Stage

Egocentrism

Animistic Thinking

Lack of Conservation

Centration

Irreversibility

Egocentrism

Perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view

Three Mountains Task

Kids younger than 4 could not imagine what the researcher was seeing from the other side of the mountain, so they assume they see from their own point of view

Pencils/Smarties Task

Kids were shown a box of smarties and asked what they believed was in the box. The kids said it would be smarties. But, when they were shown that the box of smarties had pencils in the box, the kids said they always believed pencils were in the box and others would think the same way.

Animistic Thinking

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities

• Corresponds with magical thinking of preschoolers

• Only applies with objects that move in real life

Conservation

Certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, despite changes in outward appearence

Centration

Focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to exclusion of other relevant features

Irreversibility

Inability to go through a series of steps in a problem and then mentally revesre direction and return to starting point

Concrete Operational Stage

7-11 years, Characterized by more logical, fexible, and organized though and abilities. Featuring conservation, classification, and spatial reasoning abilities

Classification

classifying objects into groups and subgroups

Decentration

the ability to pay attention to multiple attributes of an object or situation rather than being locked into attending to only a single attribute

Seriation

The ability to order items along a quantitative dimesion

• Transitive interference issues

Transitive interference

the ability to seriate mentally

Formal Operational Stage

11 years and beyond, abstract thinking, hypothetical reasoning, and metacognition

Hypothetical Reasoning

hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality

Metacognition

the awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

Cognitive Distortions

irrational thoughts that influence our emotions and behaviors. They are inaccurate or exaggerated beliefs about ourselves, others, or the world.

Imaginary Audience

A type of cognitive distortion in which you believe you are the focus

Personal Fable

A type of cognitive distortion in which you have an inflated opinion of self-importance

Critisms of Piaget

• The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is

• Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than piaget recognized

• Understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development

• Vague about mechansisms that give rise to children’s thinking and produce cogntitve growth

Information Processing Theory

Children’s cognitive growth occurs continuously from gradually surmounting processing limitations through:

• Exanding amount of information they can process at a time

• Increasing processing speeds

• Acquiring new strategies and knowledge

Task Analysis

identification of goals needed to perform the task, obstacles that prevent immediate realization of the goals, prior knowledge relevant to achieving the goals, and potential strategies for reaching the desired outcome

Computer Metaphor

Input devices (sensory memory) → Processor/RAM (working memory) ⬆ ⬇ Hard Drive Storage (long term memory) → Output (response to stimuli)

Store Model

Assumes we hold or store information in three parts of the mental system for processing

Sensory Memory

Represents sensory information

Working Memory

Actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing, and processing information is limited in both capacity (amount of information that can be stored) and length of time information can be retained.

• Happnens in less than a second

• Capacity and duration increases greatly during infancy and adolescence

Long Term Memory

Knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime containing Factual Knowledge, Conceptual Knowledge, Procedural Knowledge, and Attitudes with an Unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time

Encoding

The representation in memory of specific features of objects and events

• Encode info that draws attention or they consider important

• Faliure to encode means it will not be remembered later

Role of the Myelin in Information Processing

Increasing the number of axons covered with myelin means faster processing speed and more reliable transmissions of electrical impulses in the brain

Selective Attention

Intentionally focusing on the information most relevant to the current goal

Rehearsal

Repeating information to yourself

Organization

Grouping related items

Elaboration

creating relationships between two items not in same category