Deck 5: Seeing, Thinking, and Doing in Infancy

Question 1

Discuss the two lines of research examining infants' ability to reason about the characteristics of invisible objects. Describe these studies, including the methodology and the conclusions.

Answer 1

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Question 2

Describe how experience is related to infants' judgments of their own motor abilities. Provide two detailed examples.

Answer 2

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Question 3

Baby Ethan is sitting outdoors in his stroller while his parents are cooking hamburgers. Provide three examples of the sensations that Ethan is experiencing and three examples of his perceptions.

Answer 3

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Question 4

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the preferential-looking paradigm? How about the habituation paradigm? Give an example of a research question that would be best examined with a preferential-looking paradigm and an example of a research question that would be best examined with a habituation paradigm.

Question 5

Provide a detailed explanation of how infants' motor development affects their development in other domains. Provide at least two examples to support your explanation.

Question 6

Discuss three cues used for depth perception. For each type of cue, provide a definition, an example, and the age at which it develops.

Question 7

Describe the rationale behind three paradigms: (a) preferential-looking, (b) violation-of-expectancy, and (c) habituation. Give an example of each one.

Question 8

Describe how three concepts relate to the notion that children are active participants in their own development: preferential looking, rational learning, and self-locomotion. Provide examples to support the descriptions.

Question 9

Discuss two ways in which the development of perception is continuous and two ways in which it is discontinuous. Provide at least one example of continuous development and one example of discontinuous development in this domain.

Question 10

What do you think is the purpose of habituation from an evolutionary perspective? What about preferential looking? Use examples to support your discussion.

Question 11

How can a developmental psychologist test an infant's ability to mentally represent objects? Give three examples of tasks that could be used and discuss what it would mean if the infant could or could not do the tasks.

Question 12

The series of studies conducted using the visual cliff has provided useful information about the association between experience and judgment. Describe these studies, including the general methodology and the conclusions.

Question 13

Describe the dynamic-systems point of view. Discuss how this approach might influence a researcher's thinking about the development of crawling.

Question 14

Describe three limitations on very young infants' visual experience of the world. In other words, what are three ways in which infants younger than 2 months old see the world differently than do adults?

Question 15

Describe three ways in which 5-month-old infants see the world similarly to the way adults see the world and three ways in which 5-month-old infants see the world differently from adults. Give an example of each similarity and difference.

Question 16

Provide a detailed description of how researchers have examined 4-month-old infants' auditory-visual intermodal perception and discuss the results of at least two of these experiments.

Question 17

What is perceptual narrowing? Provide one example of perceptual narrowing and explain its benefit.

Question 18

Are perceptual skills innate, or is experience necessary? Describe two aspects of perception that indicate the innate nature of perceptual skills and describe two aspects of perception that clearly indicate that learning is necessary.

Question 19

A month-old infant and her 8-month-old cousin are sitting side-by-side watching their grandparents do laundry. Discuss five differences in the ways these two babies perceive the objects and events they are viewing.

Question 20

Describe what impact infants' ability to reach, sit upright, and crawl has on their learning about the world. Discuss how the development of these motor skills makes infants more active participants in their own development of perception and understanding of objects.

Question 21

Describe the development of infants' understanding of gravity.

Question 22

Describe what research on the visual cliff has revealed about how different domains of development are interrelated.

Question 23

Describe the role of intention in observational learning and provide an example in which an infant's attention to intention would have an impact on what was learned.

Question 24

Describe the process by which an infant might learn to make his siblings laugh through (a) instrumental conditioning and (b) observational learning.

Question 25

Baillargeon and her colleagues concluded from their research that 4-month-old infants can mentally represent objects that are out of view. Describe in detail how they arrived at this conclusion based on their examinations of infants looking at a rotating screen.

Question 26

Describe Piaget's concept of object permanence. Be sure to include the definition of object permanence, Piaget's thoughts about the development of it, and the infant behaviours that led Piaget to develop his concept.