How Children Develop – Chapter 5 – Seeing, Thinking, and Doing in Infancy
Percepton
Infants come to the world with all their sensory systems functoning to some degree and
that subsequent development occurs at a very rapid pace
Sensation – the processing of basic informaton from the external world by the
sensory receptors in the sense organs and brain
Perception – the process of organizing and interpretng sensory informaton
Vision
Infants begin using their eyes to explore, as entering the world
Vision is not as clear, but improves extremely rapidly in the frst moths
Breakthrough in research of infant´s vision through: preferential looking technique –
a method for studying visual atenton in infants that involves showing infants two
paterns or two obeects at a tme to see if the infants have a preference for one over
the other (pioneered by Robert Fantz)
o Modern versions involve the use of automatc eye trackers
o Head-mounted infant eye trackers are also used, showing where infants are
looking as they move their eyes freely around the room
Habituaton – the procedure involves repeatedly presentng an infant with a
partcular stmulus untl the infant´s response to it habituates
Visual Acuity and Color Percepton
Visual acuity – the sharpness of visual discriminaton
Poor contrast sensitiiity – the ability to detect diferences in light and dark areas in a
visual patern young infants prefer to look at paterns of high visual contrast
o Reason: immaturity of cones – the light sensitve neurons that are highly
concentrated in the fovea (the central region of the retna) and involved in
seeing fne detail and color
infants catch only 2% of the light striking the fovea, compared to 65%
for adults
Vision of 20/120 by 8 months of age, acuity approached that of
adults
By 1 month of age inability to diferentate between white and color (by 2 moths:
similar to adults)
Infants prefer colors that are unique hues (blue) over colors that are combinatons of
hues (green-blue)
Infants´ brains respond to a change in color in a diferent category, but not to a new
color in the same category infants´ brains represent some color categories prior to
the acquisiton of language
Visual Scanning
Not untl 4 moths of age are infants able to track moving obeects smoothly, and then they´re
only able to do so if an obeect is moving slowly
functon of maturaton
, Preterm infants, whose neural and perceptual systems are immature, develop
smooth visual tracking later than full-term infants do
Very preterm infants who have difculty tracking moving obeects at 4 months of
gestatonal age show poorer cognitve outcomes at 3 years of age than similarly
preterm infants
Visual scanning is important, because it is one way infants have actve control over
what they observe and learn
o By 1 month of age: infants looking at a line drawing of a face, they tend to
fxate on the perimeter – on the hairline or chin relatvely high contrast
with the background
o By 2 months of age: infants scan much more broadly, pay atenton to overall
shape and inner details
Talking faces enables them to draw connectons between the motor actons and
sounds that will be the basis for their eventual natve language
o At 4 months of age (before the onset of productve speech), infants watching
talking faces primarily fxate eyes
o After startng babbling fxate mouth
shift earlier for bilingual infants
Obeect Percepton
Perceptual constancy – the percepton of obeects as being of constant in size, shape, and
color, etc. in spite of physical diferences in the retnal image of the obeect
(origin was a traditonal component in the debates between empiricists and natvists)
Natvist view supported by evidence of perceptual constancy in newborns and
very young infants (experiment: infants had perceived the multple presentatons of
the original cube as a single obeect of a constant size, even though its retnal size
varied)
Object segregation – the identfcaton of separate obeects in a visual array
moton as a cue indicatng the boundaries between obeects (initally demonstrated by
Kellman and Spelke – rod experiment infants perceive the two rod segments as
parts of a unitary obeect)
o common movement – leads infants to perceive disparate elements moving
together as parts of a unitary obeect ( must be learned, evident at 2 months
of age, when task is simplifed)
general knowledge about the world, is used for obeect segregaton, as infants become
older
o experience with specifc obeects helps infants to understand their physical
propertes
o culture infuences atenton to the visual world
Western Caucasian adults more likely to make use of informaton in
the mouth & to focus on the focal obeects in a scene
East Asian adults more likely to make use of informaton in the eyes
& to fxate on the actons and background contexts of the scene
Patern of face percepton emerges by 7 months of age
Diferent paterns of visual atenton are displayed by 24 moths of age
Percepton
Infants come to the world with all their sensory systems functoning to some degree and
that subsequent development occurs at a very rapid pace
Sensation – the processing of basic informaton from the external world by the
sensory receptors in the sense organs and brain
Perception – the process of organizing and interpretng sensory informaton
Vision
Infants begin using their eyes to explore, as entering the world
Vision is not as clear, but improves extremely rapidly in the frst moths
Breakthrough in research of infant´s vision through: preferential looking technique –
a method for studying visual atenton in infants that involves showing infants two
paterns or two obeects at a tme to see if the infants have a preference for one over
the other (pioneered by Robert Fantz)
o Modern versions involve the use of automatc eye trackers
o Head-mounted infant eye trackers are also used, showing where infants are
looking as they move their eyes freely around the room
Habituaton – the procedure involves repeatedly presentng an infant with a
partcular stmulus untl the infant´s response to it habituates
Visual Acuity and Color Percepton
Visual acuity – the sharpness of visual discriminaton
Poor contrast sensitiiity – the ability to detect diferences in light and dark areas in a
visual patern young infants prefer to look at paterns of high visual contrast
o Reason: immaturity of cones – the light sensitve neurons that are highly
concentrated in the fovea (the central region of the retna) and involved in
seeing fne detail and color
infants catch only 2% of the light striking the fovea, compared to 65%
for adults
Vision of 20/120 by 8 months of age, acuity approached that of
adults
By 1 month of age inability to diferentate between white and color (by 2 moths:
similar to adults)
Infants prefer colors that are unique hues (blue) over colors that are combinatons of
hues (green-blue)
Infants´ brains respond to a change in color in a diferent category, but not to a new
color in the same category infants´ brains represent some color categories prior to
the acquisiton of language
Visual Scanning
Not untl 4 moths of age are infants able to track moving obeects smoothly, and then they´re
only able to do so if an obeect is moving slowly
functon of maturaton
, Preterm infants, whose neural and perceptual systems are immature, develop
smooth visual tracking later than full-term infants do
Very preterm infants who have difculty tracking moving obeects at 4 months of
gestatonal age show poorer cognitve outcomes at 3 years of age than similarly
preterm infants
Visual scanning is important, because it is one way infants have actve control over
what they observe and learn
o By 1 month of age: infants looking at a line drawing of a face, they tend to
fxate on the perimeter – on the hairline or chin relatvely high contrast
with the background
o By 2 months of age: infants scan much more broadly, pay atenton to overall
shape and inner details
Talking faces enables them to draw connectons between the motor actons and
sounds that will be the basis for their eventual natve language
o At 4 months of age (before the onset of productve speech), infants watching
talking faces primarily fxate eyes
o After startng babbling fxate mouth
shift earlier for bilingual infants
Obeect Percepton
Perceptual constancy – the percepton of obeects as being of constant in size, shape, and
color, etc. in spite of physical diferences in the retnal image of the obeect
(origin was a traditonal component in the debates between empiricists and natvists)
Natvist view supported by evidence of perceptual constancy in newborns and
very young infants (experiment: infants had perceived the multple presentatons of
the original cube as a single obeect of a constant size, even though its retnal size
varied)
Object segregation – the identfcaton of separate obeects in a visual array
moton as a cue indicatng the boundaries between obeects (initally demonstrated by
Kellman and Spelke – rod experiment infants perceive the two rod segments as
parts of a unitary obeect)
o common movement – leads infants to perceive disparate elements moving
together as parts of a unitary obeect ( must be learned, evident at 2 months
of age, when task is simplifed)
general knowledge about the world, is used for obeect segregaton, as infants become
older
o experience with specifc obeects helps infants to understand their physical
propertes
o culture infuences atenton to the visual world
Western Caucasian adults more likely to make use of informaton in
the mouth & to focus on the focal obeects in a scene
East Asian adults more likely to make use of informaton in the eyes
& to fxate on the actons and background contexts of the scene
Patern of face percepton emerges by 7 months of age
Diferent paterns of visual atenton are displayed by 24 moths of age
