1. Perception, Motor Development, Learning, and Cognition in Infancy
Chapter 5
Perception, Motor Development, Learning, and Cognition in Infancy

2. Perception Vision How do we study infant vision?
Preferential-Looking Technique—Robert Fantz (1961)
Habituation
Visual Acuity and Infants
contrast sensitivity
cones on the fovea
color vision

3. Visual acuity
An infant’s visual acuity can be estimated by comparing how long the baby looks at a striped pattern such as this one versus a plain gray square of the same size and overall brightness. This simple test, first developed by researchers interested in visual development, is frequently used to diagnose early visual problems. (From Maurer & Maurer, 1988)

4. Infants Prefer Visual Patterns
(Figure adapted with permission from “The Origin of Form Perception” by R. Fantz, 1961,
Scientific American, 204, p 72. Copyright © 1961 by the Scientific American).
© John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Vasta, 3e Fig. 7.5

5. Measurement of Infant Eye Movements
© John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Vasta, 3e Fig. 7.6

6. Infants Scan Facial Features
Seven week old babies scan faces for certain features:
High contrast borders
Eyes
© John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Vasta, 3e Fig. 7.9

7. Visual scanning
The lines superimposed on these face pictures show where two babies fixated on the images. (a) A 1-month-old looked primarily at the outer contour of the face and head, with a few fixations of the eyes. (b) A 2-month-old fixated primarily on the internal features of the face, especially the eyes and mouth. (From Maurer & Salapatek, 1976)

8. Pattern Perception Subjective contour
When you look at this figure, you no doubt see a square—what is called a subjective contour, because it does not actually exist on the page. Seven-month-olds also see the overall pattern here and detect the illusory square. (From Bertenthal, Campos, & Haith, 1980)

9. Object segregation
Infants who see the display at the left of this figure (a) perceive it as two separate objects, a rod moving behind a block. After habituating to the display they look longer at two rod segments than at a single rod (b), indicating that they find the single rod familiar but the two segments novel. If they first see a display with no movement, they look equally long at the two test displays. This result reveals the importance of movement for object segregation. (From Kellman & Spelke, 1983)

10. Depth Perception Optical Expansion Apparent at 1 month of age
Binocular Disparity
Apparent at 4 months of age
Monocular Depth Cues (Pictorial Cues)
Apparent at 6–7 months of age

11. Auditory Perception
Newborns show auditory localization at birth
Taste and Smell
Taste: Infants show preference for sweet tastes
Smell: By 2 weeks of age, infants recognize their own mother’s breast milk and scent

12. Touch
Infants explore with their hands, fingers, mouth, and tongue
Oral exploration is prevalent during the first few months
Around 4 months of age infants begin to explore by rubbing, fingering, probing, and banging objects

13. Motor Development Reflexes Motor Milestones
Innate, fixed patterns of action that occur in response to particular stimuli
Strong presence of reflexes at birth = healthy nervous system
Grasping, Rooting, Sucking, Tonic Neck Reflex, stepping
Some reflexes remain throughout life
Coughing, Sneezing, Blinking, Withdrawing from pain
Motor Milestones
Reaching
Self-locomotion
Visual Cliff

14. The major milestones of motor development in infancy
The average age and range of ages for achievement of each milestone are shown. Note that these age norms are based on research with healthy, well-nourished North American infants. (Adapted from Santrock, 1988)

15. 6 Forms of Infant Learning
Habituation
Speed of habituation Speed and
Duration of looking efficiency of
Degree of novelty preference processing
These 3 factors in infancy are related to IQs at 18
Perceptual Learning
Differentiation—what elements are invariant or stable (happy tone of voice usually occurs with a happy face)
Affordances—what actions can be performed with objects and situations (rattles are for shaking)

16. Classical Conditioning
Visual Expectancy
Infants form expectations for future events based on past experiences
Infants can anticipate simple sequences
Classical Conditioning
An Example
Unconditioned Stimulus—insertion of nipple into infant’s mouth
Unconditioned Response—sucking reflex
Conditioned Stimulus/Neutral Stimulus—baby sees breast or bottle before receiving nipple
Conditioned Stimulus—anticipatory sucking movements begin when infant sees breast or bottle
Little Albert and John B. Watson (1920)

17. Instrumental Operant Conditioning
Most research focuses on positive reinforcement
Infants form contingency relationships
the infant makes a response the infant receives reinforcement
Infants learn they can have an effect on a situation
Mobile experiments (Rovee-Collier, 1997)
Observational Learning
Infant Imitation
At birth?
Clearly evident at 6 months of age
Infants imitate other humans, not objects

18. Cognition Object Permanence A-Not-B Error
Occurs earlier than what Piaget predicted
Studied using violation-of-expectancy
Infants as young as 3½–4½ months will look longer at impossible events than possible events
A-Not-B Error
Occurs earlier than what Piaget predicted and may be dependent on certain factors
Less error with age
Less likely to go back to A if A and B are distinct
More likely to commit error as delay between A and B trials increases
More likely to commit error as number of times object hidden at A increases
Better at looking than searching

19. Possible versus impossible events
In a classic series of tests of object permanence, Renée Baillargeon and her colleagues first habituated young infants to the sight of a screen rotating through 180 degrees. Then a box was placed in the path of the screen. In the possible event, the screen rotated up, occluding the box, and stopped when it reached the top of the box. In the impossible event, the screen rotated up, occluding the box, but then continued on through 180 degrees, appearing to pass through the space where the box was. Infants looked longer at the impossible event, showing they mentally represented the presence of the invisible box. (From Baillargeon, 1987)

20. Physical Knowledge Research about objects supporting each other
At 3 months—Does contact exist?
At 5 months—What type of contact?
At 6½ months—What is the amount of contact?
At 12½ months—What is the shape of the object?

21. Infants’ developing understanding of support relations
(Adapted from Baillargeon, 1998)