PJ

Developmental Psychology 1 - Cognitive Development

Eötvös Loránd University: Developmental Psychology 1 - Cognitive Development

Course Information

  • Instructor: Patricia Gerván

  • Email: patricia.gervan@ppk.elte.hu

  • Term: 2025 Fall

Main Topics

  • Visual Perception

  • Attentional Development

  • Memory Development

Investigating Infants' Cognition

Measurement Challenges

  • Infants are mostly non-verbal, presenting a challenge for measuring interest. Common methods include:

    • Heart Rate: A measure of emotional engagement or interest.

    • Looking Time: Tracking how long an infant looks at a stimulus can indicate interest.

    • Pupillary Dilation: Variation in pupil size can reflect cognitive processing.

    • Kicking Rate: Increased movement may indicate enhanced engagement with stimuli.

  • Highlight: New stimuli provoke interest and differentiate cognitive responses to familiar ones.

Cognition Measurement Example

  • Habituation: Occurs when repeated exposure to the same stimulus leads to decreased interest.

  • Dishabituation: Increased interest occurs when a new stimulus is presented following habituation.

  • Example: Infants may show a preference for different vs. identical patterns in a habituation test.

Basic Sensory Modalities of Infants

Visual Perception

  • Development at Birth:

    • Infants are moderately farsighted and have poor fixation ability.

    • Limited color discrimination and visual acuity range from 20/200 to 20/400.

    • By age 1, vision improves to approximately 20/50; adult average is 20/20.

    • Eye size increases threefold by age 3.

Visual Acuity Measurement

  • A distance visual acuity test can measure visual sharpness at 10 feet, showing progression in vision skills over time.

Studies on Infant Visual Development

Key Research Findings

  • Davida Teller’s Work (1970s):

    • Utilized forced-choice preferential looking (FPL) to assess infants' visual preferences.

    • Experiments varied target characteristics (size, color) to construct psychometric functions of visual interest.

Contrast Sensitivity

  • Infants show varying sensitivity to different spatial frequencies, improving over early months.

Age-Based Visual Ability Improvements

  • 2 months: Develops focus and color vision.

  • 4 months: Visual acuity starts resembling adult-like levels.

  • 4 years: Fine-tuning of visual capabilities continues across early childhood.

Auditory Perception

  • Hearing develops prenatally, with substantial localization improvement in the first 11 months.

  • Infants show greater sensitivity to mid-range frequencies, relevant for social interaction.

Taste Preferences

  • Newborns can react to sweet and bitter stimuli reflecting evolutionary advantages (e.g., calorie detection, toxicity recognition).

  • Salty taste receptors develop postnatally; infants display lower preference for salt.

Tactile Sensation

  • Touch is the first developed sensory modality, crucial for bonding. Initially, infants use their mouths to explore.

  • By 11-12 months, tactile exploration shifts to hands.

Olfactory Sensation

  • Infants can recognize their mother's scent and show prenatal familiarity with specific food odors consumed by the mother.

Visual Pattern Perception

Classical Findings by Fantz (1958)

  • At 8 weeks, infants preferred patterned stimuli (checkerboard) over plain colors, indicating early perceptual differentiation.

  • By 12 weeks, Fantz demonstrated preference for face-like displays, showcasing an innate drive to recognize familiar shapes.

Developmental Milestones in Pattern and Face Recognition

  • 3 weeks: Poor contrast sensitivity.

  • 2 months: Preference for large patterns.

  • 4 months: Detects detailed patterns and subjective contours.

  • 12 months: Recognizes familiar objects even when partially hidden.

Face Perception Development

  • Newborns orient towards faces but do not discriminate complex patterns.

  • By 3 months, infants make subtle distinctions between individual faces.

  • Emotional recognition and processing develop substantially by 5 months.

Social Engagement via Facial Recognition

  • Social smiles appear in response to human faces at around 2 months, facilitating adult-infant interactions.

Visual Scanning Behaviors

  • Early visual scanning (1 month old) involves limited coverage of visual stimuli. As infants mature, more thorough scanning occurs, focusing on features such as eyes.

Perceptual Constancies and Depth Perception

Understanding Adult Perception

  • Adults use various cues to perceive the world consistently, managing limitations arising from the 2D nature of retinal images.

  • Emmert's Law: Determines that the perceived size of a retinal image correlates to the object's perceived distance.

Depth Perception Development

  • Infants demonstrate gradual improvements in depth perception sensitivity from birth through 7 months.

  • Binocular (e.g., disparity) and Monocular cues (e.g., occlusion, relative size, texture) are vital for spatial awareness.

Visual Cliff Experiments

  • Experiments by Gibson & Walk (1960) demonstrated infants' reluctance to cross perceived danger zones, indicating depth perception awareness.

  • Research highlights progressive calibration of perception with experiential learning.

Cross-Model Perception

Integration of Sensory Modalities

  • Spelke’s (1976) work shows infants match audiovisual stimuli (e.g., sounds with visual showing).

  • Infants demonstrate matching tactile and visual information as early as 1 month (Meltzoff & Borton, 1979).

Attentional Development

Understanding Attention Dynamics

  • Infants’ ability to discern attention is complex; early responses may not indicate active engagement. Key responses include orienting and sustained attention.

  • Colombo's research details an increase in visual-looking time sustained across developmental timelines (increases with age).

Key Findings in Attention

  • Orienting responses evolve into sustained attention, indicating cognitive development milestones are achieved in these gradual stages.

Memory Development in Infancy

Retention Studies

  • Rovee and Fagen (1976) found infants aged 2 to 6 months could recall learned behavior after a delay. Infants can also discriminate previously encountered stimuli.

Recognitional and Recall Memory

  • Visual paired comparison tasks (VPC) highlight that infants show preference for new stimuli over familiar ones, indicating active memory processes.

  • Studies reveal recognition capabilities in neonates and further solidify memory's developmental nature.

Long-term Memory Stability

  • Long-term recall abilities become more stable through infancy and consolidate by age 2.

Excessive Screen Time and Its Effects

Cognitive, Motor, and Socio-Emotional Impact

  • Media Exposure: By 24 months, 90% of toddlers are exposed to media, highlighting the environmental shift in early learning.

  • Studies have linked prolonged media exposure to delayed language skills and other developmental milestones.

  • Significant cognitive and language deficits are observed with increased screen time beyond 6 months.

Recommendations

  • The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting screen time for children under 2 years to promote developmental health.

Conclusion

  • Effective understanding of cognitive development requires a comprehensive review of sensory, cognitive, and responsive abilities in infants. These developmental windows emphasize intricate interplays between environmental and innate predispositions in shaping cognitive functions.