Visual Short-Term Memory Capacity In Infants

An explanation of the impact of current research into development and learning of babies and young children.

This study is performed on 2.5 year olds, and tests their ability to use their knowledge of the

Memory is divided into three categories. These categories consist of: sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory, out of these short term memory is the main focus in this essay. It has been widely researched due to interest of how much memory can be stored, how long this memory can be stored for and what information is memorised.

Imagine that you are a psychologist who wants to determine the earliest point in human development at which an infant can demonstrate specific skills, such as the ability to judge distances or to differentiate between lines at different angles. Suggest research approaches and techniques that might be helpful in studying these questions. Note the difficulties that might be expected.

Do babies get bored? Let’s find out. In this simple experiment, it will be seen how much a baby is interested in toys or objects. By counting how many seconds the infant stares at them can help reveal what is inside the baby’s mind as shown by the baby’s behavior in terms of staring at and then looking away from the toys. What is being observed in this experiment is the length of time the baby pays attention to a given toy before the baby looks away from the object. So the baby is introduced to certain toys several times until the baby gets used to or habituated to them. This simple experiment will tell us how the baby’s brain works and how this may affect the baby’s learning skills in the future.

During infancy, development occurs at a rapid pace. Within the first year, four core cognitive abilities exist that are unique from each other: attention, speed of processing, memory, and representational competence (Rose, Feldman, and Jankowski, 2004). A rapid development of visual attention manifests within the first 3 months alone (Geva, & Gardner,1999), and as a result, one aspect of infant visual attention that is commonly examined is look duration among infant populations. Look duration is related to infant cognitive performance such that infants with shorter looking behaviors are able to process information faster and more efficiently than infants with longer

Throughout the course of this semester, I have been surprised to see how much I have learned about the development of infants. When it comes to the object permanence, initially I did think it was of the short attention span that I thought infants had that contributed to them not searching for occluded object. This study showed that memory limitations are not the only factor in occlusions or partially occluded objects. It reminded me of other behaviors that we discussed in class such as habituation and dishabituation where habitation is presenting a stimulus to an infant and see how long it takes for them to get bored of it while dishabituation is when the infant is interested. From playing with my little cousins and volunteering at the Children’s

The research in infancy recognition of visual stimuli has recently had a lot of attention. One such experiment compared infant’s abilities to immediately recognize objects they have been familiarized with. The results showed that the older the child, the less time it took to establish recognition that was combined with reduced recognition time (Feldman, Jankowski & Rose, 2003). This study shows that an infant develops visual recognition through time, that their brain needs time to mature into the ability to be able to establish permanent recognition.

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).

Perceptual abilities were thought to be only developed in the later year of infancy until new techniques for studying infant perception proved this theory wrong and that infants have the ability right after birth. Physically newborns can see 7-15 inches away, which is also the distance that the parents face is when holding the newborn. Infants sight will keep expanding as they continue to grow and the by age one it is said that their visual perception will be at the point where their vision is the best it will ever be. Infants show their interest in visual perception by looking at patterns and objects for long period of times than they do with less vibrant objects and colors Patterns are a lot more visual for infants than just plain colors

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.

The author invites the reader on his own journey to understanding how the developing brain works. He learns that to facilitate recovery, the loss of

Growing up we use our key senses to understand and live in the world around us. After birth newborns eyes are still developing and cannot make out fine details far away. Newborns vision is around 20/240, but by 6 months their vision clears up to around 20/40. At birth infants are genetically programmed to know who their mother is and by three months they can match voices with their gender and ethnic groups. Along with being better to distinguish voices, newborns sense of colors also enhances with age. Perceptual vision is very important for infant eye development. This is necessary because without this ability they would see an “object at a different distance or in a different orientation, they would perceive it as a different object” (Santrock 161). There are two main factors for this size constancy,

Successful levels and stages of development are majorly associated with the increasing efficiency and memory capacity. These explain a progression to higher stages and individual differences which increases by same age persons and cognitive performance. Research indicates that the performance of children at a given age is changeable from domain to domain such as the understanding of social, mathematical, and spatial concepts that it is impossible to place the child in a single stage. This level involves processes that define the volume and kind of information that the individual child can process. For example, reflexes arise before birth and are still present in newborns. Sometimes, prenatal development and birth complications may also be connected to neurodevelopmental disorders. Young children react to various motivations in various ways (Damon & Lerner, 2006). For example infants’ sight blurry in early stages improves over time.

This paper is going to carry out a literature review on cognitive development in infants. The paper will review cognitive development in infants at different stages. Effects of early experience on mental development in infants will also be discussed. The research question and the hypothesis of the research will also be given.