PSYC 205 Lecture Notes - Depth Perception, Habituation, Subjective Constancy
Sensation - processing of basic information from the external world by sensory receptors in sense organs
and brain
Perception - process of organizing and interpreting sensory information
Vision - Poor at birth, but improves in few months
Hearing, touch, taste, and smell - Fairly well developed at birth, but not adult like
Eye Anatomy:
Retina - A thin layer of cells at the back of the eyeball
Macula - A spot near the center of the retina
Fovea - a tiny spot located near the center of macula and contains the highest number of cone
cells
Infant Limitations:
Have trouble getting image on the fovea
oLack of convergence of both eyes - one eye is focused on one image than the other and
this is why they cannot position the image on the fovea
oFocusing response is slow and imprecise - image gets focused in front of the fovea which
leads to blurred images
Have trouble reading the image that is on the fovea
oIn adults, fovea is a tiny spot but it contains a lot of cells and allows for daylight vision,
fine detail, and color. However, in infants, the fovea is twice as wide and the cones are
immature and catch less of the light - thus, poor acuity and poor color vision
Poor acuity - how clearly we can detect contrasts and thus, infants require high
pattern contrast
Poor color vision - can distinguish some contrasting colors at birth but by 3-4
months, color vision is basically adult like
Intermodal perception - Most events include simultaneous stimulations - multiple senses acting
together such as visual and audio
Matching sights and sounds - Spelke & Owsley (3.5 months and older)
There are two screens - one with mom video and one with dad and in the middle is the speaker
that would either play moms or dads voice
It was found that if you play moms voice, infant would look at mom video screen and if you play
dads voice, infant would look at dad video screen
Mouth movement (Kuhl & Meltzoff)
Two screens - one with a person doing an "aah" mouth movement and another with a person
doing "ee" mouth movement with no sound
If "aah" sound was played, they would look at person doing the same mouth movement and
same with "ee"
Synchrony (Spelke)
Donkey hopping to a slow beat or kangaroo hopping to fast beat
Sound plays that goes to the same beat of the bouncing and checked if infants oriented to the
sound with the bouncing speed
Matching sight with touch -
Gave babies 2 pacifiers - one nibbled and one smooth - had them suck for a while and then
showed it to the babies
Babies tend to look at the one they sucked on for longer
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Sensation - processing of basic information from the external world by sensory receptors in sense organs and brain. Perception - process of organizing and interpreting sensory information. Vision - poor at birth, but improves in few months. Hearing, touch, taste, and smell - fairly well developed at birth, but not adult like. Retina - a thin layer of cells at the back of the eyeball. Macula - a spot near the center of the retina. Fovea - a tiny spot located near the center of macula and contains the highest number of cone cells. Have trouble getting image on the fovea o. Lack of convergence of both eyes - one eye is focused on one image than the other and this is why they cannot position the image on the fovea o. Focusing response is slow and imprecise - image gets focused in front of the fovea which leads to blurred images.
