PSYC-223 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5-6: Habituation, Information Processing, Deductive Reasoning
21 Sep 2016
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Psyc 223
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Chapter 5: Perceptual and Motor Development
-Sensory and perceptual processes are the means by which people receive, select,
modify, and organize stimulation from the world.
Ex. Brother playing drums while baby is sleeping. First few times is startled by the
drumming, then soon falls asleep. After a few days, baby hardly wakes up when
drumming began.
-Perceptual processes are closely linked to motor skills - coordinated movements of
the muscle and limbs.
Habituation: When a novel stimulus is presented, babies pay attention as it
becomes more familiar.
Ex. Babies given two stimuli - a high pitched tone/ low pitched tone or a sweet tasting
substance/ a sour tasting substance. Researcher use habituation to study perception by
repeatedly presenting a stimulus such as a low pitched tone until an infant barely
responds. Then present a strong stimulus such as a high pitched tone. If the infant
responds strongly, then they can distinguish the two stimuli.
-Smell, Taste, and Touch
-Hearing
-Seeing
-Integrating Sensory Information
Smell, Taste and Touch
•Even newborns can taste, touch and smell.
•Newborns have a keen sense of smell, they respond postively to pleasant smells and
negatively to unpleasant smells.
•They also have a highly developed sense of taste. The readily differentiate salty, sour,
bitter and sweet tastes.
•Newborns are also sensitive to touch. Many areas of the newborn’s body respond
reflexively when touched. Touching an infants cheek, mouth, hand, or foot produces
reflexive movements, documenting that infants perceive touch.
!1
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Psyc 223
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
•The infants nervous system definitely is capable of transmitting pain. Receptors for
pain in the skin are just as plentiful in infants as they are in adults.
Hearing
•Infants do not hear as well as adults.
Auditory threshold: the quietest sound that a person can hear.
•Infants hear sounds that have pitches the range of human speech- neither high- nor
very low pitches.
•Infants also use sound to locate objects, determining whether they are to the left,
right, nearby or far away.
Seeing
Visual acuity: the smallest pattern that can be distinguished dependably. Acuity is
20/200 to 20/400 at birth, but improves rapidly.
•Testing infants acuity: infants will look at pattern stimuli, instead of plain non-
patterned stimuli.
Cones: are specialized neurons that detect wavelength-and therefore color that
are in the retina of the eye.
•By 3 or 4 months an infants color perception is like an adults’ color perception.
Integrating Sensory Information
•Infants can recognize visually an object that they previously have touched.
•Infants can detect relations between visual and auditory information.
Ex. They know, that an object moving into the distance looks smaller and is harder to
hear.
Amodal: certain information, such as duration, rate, and intensity that can be
presented in different senses.
Ex. The sound of a clap
Intersensory Redundancy Theory: The infants perceptual system is particularly
attuned to amodal information that is presented to multiple sensory modes.
!2
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Psyc 223
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Ex. When an infant sees and hears the mother clapping (visual, auditory information) he
focuses on the information conveyed to both senses and pays less attention to the
information thats only available in one sense, such as color of a mothers nail polish or
the sounds of her humming
Perceiving Objects
-Infants master perceptual constancies early. By 4 months infants use a number of
cues to determine which elements go together to form objects. One important cue is
motion. Motion, color, texture and aligned edges are used to perceive objects.
Size Constancy: the realization
that an object’s actual size
remains the same despite
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