Chapter 13:

·         Visual acuity improves rapidly in infancy, and vision is adultlike by around 10 years of age. Vision can be affected by presbyopia and other physical changes in the eye that occur with aging‚ but most changes can be corrected by lenses or accommodated through manipulation of environmental factors such as lighting.

·         Space perception is an important aspect of visual perception. Cues about depth and distance‚ which are necessary for space perception‚ are derived either from the two eyes’ different locations or from head movement‚ so that infants appear to perceive a three-dimensional world.

·         Adults perceive objects largely by detecting edges, whereas infants might rely more on depth and distance cues.

·         Infants are sensitive to the size and shape of objects‚ gradually become aware of subtle changes in orientation‚ and perceive motion.

·         The kinesthetic system is functional at birth, makes substantial advancements in maturity between 3 and 8 years of age, and continues smaller improvements through adolescence and into adulthood.

·         Although some impairments have been reported in older adults‚ much kinesthetic function is well maintained.

·         Newborns feel touches but must improve in order to experience tactile localization; awareness of self and laterality is adultlike by the end of the first decade, and the perception of directionality is adultlike shortly thereafter.

·         The kinesthetic system provides both feedback about body position and feedforward information that help us maintain body position, especially when we see that a disruption to that position looms.

·         Infants have adultlike hearing by 6 months of age. Older adult losses in hearing may result as much from environmental exposure as from physiological degeneration because excessive noise can kill cochlear hair cells.

·         Infants can perceive locations of sounds‚ differences in sounds‚ and patterns in sounds at some level but develop the ability to make finer discriminations with advancing age.

·         Beyond the declines attributable to changes in the sensory systems‚ we know little about changes in older adult perception.

·         The nervous system is structured for multimodal perception, some areas of the brain receiving input from different sensory-perceptual modalities.

·         Infants demonstrate basic levels of auditory-visual, visual-kinesthetic, and auditory-kinesthetic integration.