Human Perception and Its Afor Adaptation - Essay Example

Psychology Face Processing By getting more experience some of human abilities can be improved while on the contrary, as the result, some of them decrease. Upon this idea a lot of spheres of human life are organized. But originally everything comes from human perception and its ability for adaptation. With more social experience which human individual receives from communication with other humans more adaptation comes, and individual becomes more anthropic orientated. The same thing may be with animals. For example, studies confirm that adult monkeys are better to perceive monkeys, as well as adult humans are better to perceive humans (Pascalis, Haan and Nelson, 2002). Therefore scientists logically suppose that this adaptation to the species-specific environment must have begun at one time. Oliver Pascalis, Michelle de Haan and Charles A. Nelson have studied the subject. Specifically they were focused on human ability to process faces. Review: hypotheses and methods Previously it was found that after 6-10-month from the birth human infants begin to narrow a sound perception. They determine the syllabic system and phonetics of native language among variety of other foreign languages and other sounds and therefore discriminate foreign speech. Then, during the first two years of life infants learn to talk native language (“Developmental milestone: Talking”, n.d.). Pascalis, Haan and Nelson proposed that language is not the only skill that develops in this way. From a general perception with aging and getting more experience other skills may be similarly specified. Particularly, this “perceptional narrow phenomenon” may also work for face processing. Nelson proposed that with a more human faces’ processing experience humans’ cortical specialization is going on, and individual becomes more sensitive to faces within his native specie and only increase this ability with age. Studying on a subject in 2001Hann, Johnson, Maurer and Perrett have already found that infants form face prototypes by 3 month age (Pascalis, Haan and Nelson, 2002). Logically, and by the analogy of a language processing study, elder infants were studied in current research to confirm hypothesis about face processing narrowing in 9-month-old infants comparing to 6-month-old infants. Scientists also proposed that adults are much more anthropic orientated and have narrowed their face processing. Pascalis, Haan and Nelson hypnotized that only the youngest group of people (month-old infants) would demonstrate equal face recognition within native specie as well as within strange specie, while 6-month-old infants and adult humans supposed to demonstrate clear and better determination only within native specie. For the experimental proof three studied groups of people were properly formed. They were 11 adults with no specific recognition experience, 30 healthy 6-month-old infants and 30 healthy 9-month-old infants (both group consisted of full-termed babies). Pascalis, Haan and Nelson used the VPC (visual paired-comparison) method for the main experimental method. VPC procedure is a method that was specially developed to study early perceptional function, but nowadays it’s also widely used in other different memory studies. It was firstly developed by Franz in 1956 exactly while studying infants’ perception with stimuli – making changes in infants’ environment and observing responses (Winn 2001). Franz had discovered that infants about 2-3-month-old and elder were spending more time looking at novel stimuli comparing with the time they had spent on processing familiar stimuli (Nelson 2008). In current experiment two stimuli confrontation was used. They were colored images of Caucasian male and female faces and monkey (Macaca fascicularis) faces. During a single time phase familiar and novel pictures of individuals both from the same specie were shown to the studied. Time was the main variable in current experiment. Therefore more time studied spent on pictures face processing within monkey specie comparing to the time spent on processing humans’ faces, more narrowed face perception studied may have. Results Results have confirmed the hypotheses. For group of adults the time they have spent on novel humans faces processing (novel stimuli were pictures of faces they have never seen before) and the time they have spent face processing the pictures with humans’ faces they have previously seen for several times (familiar stimuli) differed pretty much. Pictures with novel human faces needed more time for adult studied to spend on face processing. With monkeys’ faces it wasn’t the similar way. Familiar stimuli (monkeys’ faces which studied have seen for several times before) need as much time on face processing as novel stimuli. Adults were demonstrating “a perceptional narrow phenomenon”. 6-month-old infants group in humans’ faces processing have shown expectable results. This group needed more time to process novel human face stimuli and when processing faces they were previously shown for several times less time were needed. Similar with the adults, 6-month-old infants needed more time to process novel faces in comparison with familiar ones. But opposite from adults they demonstrated the same tendency when processing monkeys’ faces. Those monkeys’ faces 6-month-old infants have never seen before needed more time to be processed in comparison with monkeys’ faces infants were previously shown. Therefore this group of infants has demonstrated no “perceptional narrow phenomenon”. 9-month-old group have demonstrated similar to adults results. They have spent more time on processing novel stimuli then on processing familiar ones within humans’ faces. But to process familiar monkeys’ faces 9-month-old infants needed as much time as they needed for novel monkeys’ face processing. And yet generally, in comparison with adults they needed more time for face processing for both species. Critique These results prove that during the first year of life human narrows his/her perception not only in native language, but in native face processing. Visual perception becomes more anthropic orientated. By studying 6- and 9-month-old infants it was found that “perceptional narrow phenomenon” began to develop within six and ninth months from birth. I think that retrieved results in future may be specified, studied wider and serve for analogical studies. Knowing the period when perceptional narrowing begins researches can try to find out when it begins specifically in order to narrow this period. If narrowing the age of infants when perceptional narrowing begins the subject can be studied deeper. Nelson proposed that specialization can be observed on brain cortical, but current research method hasn’t scanned those changes. Another method, already mentioned in the article, the ERPs, can make study more specific, because more evidence can be received. Event-related potentials method gives data about brain activity while responding on stimuli therefore brain activity during face processing can be studied (Eysenck, 2002). Also by comparing brain changes during 6-9-month period many new information about perception changes can be retrieved. It may help to treat people with memory loss and people with mental disorders. Could perception go the inverse way? And the answer is yes, then on what conditions? Despite that conditions can be possible or impossible to simulate in order to improve medical practice, data will be of use in education and when working with children with special needs. To go wider in research means to study face processing not only with human-monkey stimuli, but on human-human stimuli. Do we better perceive people with the similar ethnic origin? And how it depends on modern multicultural environment? May be some racial prejudges can be solved. Humans’ perception of other humans can be of use in social psychology and different social studies. Research also can be spread on human-other-animals’ perception studies. It can be found what species, accept monkeys, are more close to our perception and why. It could be interesting to study companion animals this way. A lot of people have ones, so does it change human determination of those species individuals? To continue analogous studies means to study humans’ other perceptive senses. Perceptional narrow phenomenon during the first years of life may also develop in similar way with smells and tastes and tactical sense. In what ways does it determine humans’ personality? There well-known humans’ ability to reconstruct episodes from the past by sensing particular stimuli, so by studying perception’s narrowing more information about memory function can be retrieved. Nowadays in psychology the dominant tendency is patients’ self-treatment. It means patients themselves are given more control upon their conditions and psychologists better consult their patients than treat them. Knowing more about own perception will help patients to manage their conditions better. However in future this research can be of use, it already confirms once again a huge role which perception plays in humans’ understanding of the world. It highlights the role of environment in human identification and that humankind is going through some psychological changes with socialization. References Developmental milestone: Talking. (n.d.). BabyCenter. Retrieved from http://www.babycenter.com/0_developmental-milestone-talking_6573.bc?page=1 Eysenck, M. W. (2002). Simply Psychology. Taylor & Francis Publishing. Nelson, C. A. (2008). Ontology of Human Memory. In Johnson, M. H., Munakata Y. and R. O. Gilmore (Eds.), Brain Development and Cognition: A Reader (pp. 151-178). John Willey & Sons Publishing. Pascalis, O., Haan, M. and C. A. Nelson. (2002). Is Face Processing Species-Specific During the First Year of Life? Science, vol. 296, pp. 1321-1323. Winn, P. (2001). Dictionary of Biological Psychology. Taylor & Francis Publishing. Read More