Perceptual Narrowing In Infants

Infants are aware of sizes and can distinguish between colors such as red, yellow, and blue. Newborns are clearly capable of hearing, they tend to react to certain kinds of sounds. For example, a crying newborn will continue to cry if he or she hears other newborns crying (Feldman, 2014, p.114). Infants also learn to respond through operant conditioning. Operant conditioning, is a form of learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened, depending on its association with positive or negative consequences. For example, an infant who learns that smiling at his or her parents brings positive attention may smile more often. Infants demonstrate learning through habituation. Habituation is the decrease in the response to a stimulus that occurs after repeated presentation of the same stimulus. An example of habitation, a baby who showed interest and surprise at first seeing a novel toy may show no interest after seeing the same toy several times (Feldman, 2014, p.116). The cognitive change allows the infant to start learning their surroundings. The infant will start to recognize the faces of parents, feel pain, and to be able to react with the changes in their

Babies are unfamiliar with the outside world when born. They need to find familiarity and they do this by a process called “Perceptual discrimination”. Although babies can’t see well they discriminate between faces, sounds, and smells starting as early as three days old. This helps them feel calm and trust their environment. During the many studies conducted pertaining to the baby’s visual perception they show that the babies tend to have more visual stimuli when looking at a familiar face. Especially when looking at their own mothers face rather than a strangers face. When doing smell tests it showed that the babies preferred their mother’s breast milk rather than another women’s breast milk and they also prefer the smell of their mother to

The physical development of a baby in its first six months of life shows limited range of movement but the beginnings of an ability to respond to stimulus around them. They show their reaction to people, sounds and movement by turning their head toward whatever attracts their attention. They will watch an adult’s face whilst feeding, but have already begun to shows signs of recognition as they will smile when familiar people are around them either because they can see them

Cognitively, the way infants process information undergoes rapid changes during the infant’s first year. For instance, the Piagetian theory of cognitive development includes (1) the sensorimotor stage in which infants, through trial an error, build their understanding of things around the world (e.g. imitation of familiar behaviour); (p. 203, Chapter 6); (2) building schemas (e.g. a 5 month old child can move or drop an object fairly rigidly, whereas an older child can do the same action but with more intentional and creative movement);(p. 202, Chapter 6) and (3) the concept of object permanence (e.g. an infant knows that an object exists even though it is hidden encourages the child’s perceptual skills and awareness of the objects ‘realness’ in the world (p.

Babies prefer the sound of humans interacting to other sounds and from this, they quickly learn to recognise and identify their mother’s voice. Babies form their first relationship through emotional attachments with their mother or main carer. The first year of a baby’s life is a period of incredible growth, and a baby’s brain goes through critical periods during which stimulation is needed for proper development. During the babies first years, visual stimuli or verbal language is necessary for areas of the brain to grow and without this growth, a child’s vision or speaking abilities might be impaired. Infants tend to have different cries for hunger or pain, as well as making other noises. These abilities show your child is gaining communication and pre-language skills. Infants from birth to 6 months will forget about objects they cannot see however they begin to explore objects they can see and grab by putting them in their mouths. They will also follow moving objects with their eyes and look around at nearby objects. Infants in this stage will turn to look at a source of sound. These developmental milestones show a baby’s brain is developing and they are gaining new skills. From 7 to 12 months, infants also learn the idea of cause and effect, and they might repeat an action that causes a

Stranger wariness: Infant no longer smiles at any friendly face but cries or looks frightened when an unfamiliar person moves too close.

Laura Schulz’s presentation, The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies, explores the idea of how babies and young children are able to learn so much in such a short span of time. In Schulz’s presentation, the viewers see multiple video experiments where she introduces babies to different balls and toys that make noises. I choose to explain and break down the first experiment, that she discusses. In the first experiment Schulz has a colleague reach into a bucket with mostly blue balls and a few yellow balls. The colleague pulls out three of the balls and when she takes each ball out she squeaks them. The colleague then pulls out a yellow ball and hands it to the baby. The child copies what Schulz’s colleague has done, but however the

Saxe identifies this group as preverbal babies. By studying the behaviors of these infants, psychologists are able determine that basic instinct that humans share. These babies, aged between four and twelve months, are much too young to be influenced by the institution around them. The infants are also too young to communicate their thought processes, so psychologists analyze the only responses these infants can communicate, looking and crawling. In the experiment involving these preverbal infants, babies were shown videos of one man being “nice” to a girl while another was “mean” to the girl.

and exercise. Whilst early on vision is best at 25cm they can gradually focus on objects further away. • Intellectual Development: Baby explores its environment by putting objects in its mouth. They become aware of different smells and can recognise familiar faces and voices. Baby can focus on moving objects and responds to brightly coloured bold images. Baby is egocentric. • Communication and Language Development: Baby will turn head towards sounds and recognises familiar voices – will stop crying when it hears them. Baby responds to smiles when not upset, pauses to listen and makes noises as well as crying to gain

Beginning with cognitive skill, babies have an innate ability to not only make facial expressions of their desires but also

Infant learning and brain development is fragile and contingent upon numerous intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The most critical time frame for infant brain development is from the second trimester to the first three months of life (Marshall, 2011). During this time, neural pathways are forming, areas of the brain are maturing, and brain development is rapid. From infancy until the age of 3 years, neural pathways are still being formed in response to stimulation and for this reason, it is extremely important for caregivers and parents to be aware of the many factors that can influence brain development in infants (Marshall, 2011).

At a certain age infants begin to resist the unfamiliar and are very vocal in expressing their feelings (Brazelton, 1992).

This stage lasts from birth to twelve months. In this stage, infants gain knowledge about their surrounding by using their senses. (Clarke-Stewart, Gruber, & Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 154). They recognize the faces of their caregivers and may respond to smiles. At these stage infants are generally attracted to bright colors, and show response to sound by turning towards the direction of the sound. Studies have indicated that infants between the ages of three and seven weeks have the ability to recognize shapes and pictures of human faces (Goswami, 1994, p. 376).

New born infants have poor visual acuity as opposed to adults. Visual acuity measures to what extent an individual can detect visual detail. Their lack of visual acuity means they see the world a more ill-defined manner. Adult visual acuity is thirty times the visual acuity of a new born (Van Hof-van Duin & Mohn 1985). Atkinson & Bradrick (1981), supported this and found that new born infants could only detect the separation of lines if they are 30 times wider than the minimum width adults can detect. There is at least a five-fold improvement by 6 months of age in acuity, though it takes several years for it to reach adult level, Brown & Yamamoto 1986. New born infants also have poor visual accommodation, needed to make sharp retinal images at different distances.

Sound is another sensation and perception that is tested in infants. Studies have shown that infants are able to hear two months before they are born, so once they are born they immediately recognize the voice of