👶 Chapter 4: Infant Perception and Cognition
🧠 OVERVIEW
This chapter explores how infants perceive and make sense of their environment
in the first year of life. It combines behavioral research with neurological insights
to uncover how infants understand sights, sounds, objects, and numbers — and
how this forms the foundation for later cognition.
👁️ BASIC PERCEPTUAL ABILITIES OF YOUNG INFANTS
● Infants are born with functional but immature senses.
● Vision is the least developed, but tactile and auditory systems are well
developed.
● Sensory input supports growth and cognitive development.
● Tactile stimulation improves stress regulation and weight gain.
● Chemical senses (smell and taste) are functional early on and influence
bonding and feeding.
🔬 METHODOLOGIES USED TO ASSESS INFANT
PERCEPTION
🍼 “This Sucks”: Using Infant Sucking
● High-amplitude sucking shows recognition, preference, or surprise.
● Example: DeCasper & Spence found prenatal exposure to a story led
newborns to prefer that story postnatally.
● Shows learning and memory even before birth.
, 👀 Visual Preference Paradigm
● Infants are shown two images — their looking time indicates preference
or discrimination.
● Often prefer novel, high-contrast, or face-like stimuli.
🔄 Habituation/Dishabituation Paradigm
● Habituation = Decreased attention to repeated stimulus.
● Dishabituation = Renewed interest in a new stimulus.
● Shows discrimination, categorization, and memory.
● Friedman’s work: Infants form conceptual categories (e.g., human face
vs. scrambled features).
👁️🗨️ DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL PERCEPTION
👶 Vision in the Newborn
● Visual system is underdeveloped at birth.
● Key improvements:
○ Accommodation (focusing)
○ Convergence (eye coordination)
○ Visual acuity
○ Color perception
🧠 OVERVIEW
This chapter explores how infants perceive and make sense of their environment
in the first year of life. It combines behavioral research with neurological insights
to uncover how infants understand sights, sounds, objects, and numbers — and
how this forms the foundation for later cognition.
👁️ BASIC PERCEPTUAL ABILITIES OF YOUNG INFANTS
● Infants are born with functional but immature senses.
● Vision is the least developed, but tactile and auditory systems are well
developed.
● Sensory input supports growth and cognitive development.
● Tactile stimulation improves stress regulation and weight gain.
● Chemical senses (smell and taste) are functional early on and influence
bonding and feeding.
🔬 METHODOLOGIES USED TO ASSESS INFANT
PERCEPTION
🍼 “This Sucks”: Using Infant Sucking
● High-amplitude sucking shows recognition, preference, or surprise.
● Example: DeCasper & Spence found prenatal exposure to a story led
newborns to prefer that story postnatally.
● Shows learning and memory even before birth.
, 👀 Visual Preference Paradigm
● Infants are shown two images — their looking time indicates preference
or discrimination.
● Often prefer novel, high-contrast, or face-like stimuli.
🔄 Habituation/Dishabituation Paradigm
● Habituation = Decreased attention to repeated stimulus.
● Dishabituation = Renewed interest in a new stimulus.
● Shows discrimination, categorization, and memory.
● Friedman’s work: Infants form conceptual categories (e.g., human face
vs. scrambled features).
👁️🗨️ DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL PERCEPTION
👶 Vision in the Newborn
● Visual system is underdeveloped at birth.
● Key improvements:
○ Accommodation (focusing)
○ Convergence (eye coordination)
○ Visual acuity
○ Color perception
