Chapter 5 Seeing, thinking and doing infancy
Perception
Sensation = the processing of basic information from the external world by the
sensory receptors in the sense organs and brain.
Perception = the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.
1. Vision
a. Preferential-looking technique (Robert Frantz) = a method for
studying visual attention in infants that involves showing infants two
patterns or two objects at a time to see if the infants have a preference
for one over the other.
b. Infants prefer looking at pattern.
c. The preferential looking technique is executed in two ways:
i. use of eye trackers
ii. habituation: present an infant with a particular stimulus until the
response declines.
d. Visual acuity = the sharpness of visual discrimination
e. Infants like patterns with a high visual contrast → poor contrast
sensitivity (= ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in a
visual pattern)
f. Reasons for contrast sensitivity:
i. cone cells are not fully developed yet: are spaced 4x further
apart than adults’ cones.
ii. during first month infants can’t distinguish between white and
other colors.
g. Visual scanning:
i. is important because infants have active control over what they
observe/learn.
ii. looking at talking faces.
iii. bilingual infants show shift preferring to look at mouth instead of
eyes earlier than monolingual infants.
h. Object perception:
i. Perceptual constancy = the perception of objects as being of
constant size, shape, color, etc., in spite of physical differences
in the retinal image of the object.
ii. Visual experience is not necessary for size constancy.
iii. Object segregation = the identification of separate objects in a
visual array.
iv. Movement is important to distinguish objects from each other →
because of common movement (in example) the 2 segments
always moved together and therefore it’s seen as a whole.
v. Experience with specific objects helps infants to understand
their physical properties.
2. Auditory perception
Perception
Sensation = the processing of basic information from the external world by the
sensory receptors in the sense organs and brain.
Perception = the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.
1. Vision
a. Preferential-looking technique (Robert Frantz) = a method for
studying visual attention in infants that involves showing infants two
patterns or two objects at a time to see if the infants have a preference
for one over the other.
b. Infants prefer looking at pattern.
c. The preferential looking technique is executed in two ways:
i. use of eye trackers
ii. habituation: present an infant with a particular stimulus until the
response declines.
d. Visual acuity = the sharpness of visual discrimination
e. Infants like patterns with a high visual contrast → poor contrast
sensitivity (= ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in a
visual pattern)
f. Reasons for contrast sensitivity:
i. cone cells are not fully developed yet: are spaced 4x further
apart than adults’ cones.
ii. during first month infants can’t distinguish between white and
other colors.
g. Visual scanning:
i. is important because infants have active control over what they
observe/learn.
ii. looking at talking faces.
iii. bilingual infants show shift preferring to look at mouth instead of
eyes earlier than monolingual infants.
h. Object perception:
i. Perceptual constancy = the perception of objects as being of
constant size, shape, color, etc., in spite of physical differences
in the retinal image of the object.
ii. Visual experience is not necessary for size constancy.
iii. Object segregation = the identification of separate objects in a
visual array.
iv. Movement is important to distinguish objects from each other →
because of common movement (in example) the 2 segments
always moved together and therefore it’s seen as a whole.
v. Experience with specific objects helps infants to understand
their physical properties.
2. Auditory perception
