The Development of Infants Visual Perception During the First Year of Life - Coursework Example

Discuss the evidence from research into the development of infants’ visual perception during the first year of life. Outline Human development is a fascinating area of study. Among other things, it helps understand how a child learns to use complex behaviours in an almost unconscious manner. Given the extent to which people tend to rely on their vision, the development of the visual systems and the associated development of a child’s ability to perceive things provides for fascinating investigation. This essay shall attempt to understand how research in the area of infants’ visual perception is carried out, and what the researchers are able to conclude about the experiences of babies. Since small children are unable to provide feedback the way adult participants in research studies do; there is all the more reason to be careful with the collection and analysis of this information. Traditional methods of conducting studies and data collection cannot be used with infants. Thus, researchers have to be innovative as well as careful in collecting and analysing the data on infants. This essay shall discuss the methods used by researcher, some of the concerns associated with these studies as well as the importance of their findings. Introduction Infants experience significant and rapid development in almost all physiological and psychological aspects in the first few months of their lives (Slater & Oates, 2005). Among the areas that see the most rapid changes is an infant’s visual perception. New-born infants are able to perceive depth, shape and the most basic features of an object (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). They seem able to discriminate between different objects, and show a preference for new stimuli (Slater & Oates, 2005). A significant concern faced by researchers studying very young children is that they are unable to interact with their participants as they could with adults or older children. Although researcher try to base their conclusions on empirical data as much as possible, it can sometimes be difficult to verify a theory conclusively. Thus, it is often difficult to establish whether a response (or the lack of one) is associated with a genuine phenomenon, or is an artefact of the child’s yet underdeveloped visual, motor and cognitive systems (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). In an attempt to reduce the effects of these factors, researchers have tried to simplify the means by which they collect data from infants. Typically, data on visual perception is collected by measuring the time a child attends to a particular stimulus (Slater & Oates, 2005). This time maybe calculated mechanically, or more recently, using computers and other technology to aid accuracy. Brain imaging has also been used (albeit sparingly) to understand the development of the brain structures associated with visual perception (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). As far as possible, researchers try to reduce chances of error due to their own expectations, the child’s limitations or other situational factors. Over time, these studies have tried to expose infants to different types of material, and have tried to identify why children attend to the material that they do. While some old theories have been upheld by new data, others have been modified and even rejected based on fresh data. Significant studies in understanding infants’ visual perception One of the seminal studies in understanding visual perception in infants was conducted by Robert Fantz in 1963. In this study, 18 infants who were just a few days old were shown different stimuli. The researcher measured the amount of time they fixated on each of the stimuli, and the preference shown for each stimulus. Each child was shown six cards, three with bright colours (red, white and fluorescent yellow) and three with patterns in black and white (concentric circles, newsprint and a schematic face pattern). Since infants are unable to respond to instructions or indicate their preference verbally, the researcher chose to place the child in a crib, and present the stimuli at a distance of one foot. Fixation was calculated as the amount to time the child looked at the stimulus. Timings were noted only when each stimulus in the series could be shown at least twice. During a previous study, Fantz found that older infants preferred the patterned stimuli; and these findings were replicated with the younger participants. While the face-like stimulus was the most preferred, the infants also fixated on the concentric circles and newsprint, but paid comparatively less attention to the coloured but un-patterned stimuli. A number of studies have since established that children indeed do prefer patterned to un-patterned stimuli (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011); and seem to attend to objects that will provide them with the most amount of information. While ample care seems to be taken to ensure that the limitations of infants do not affect the results of these studies, it is also important to ensure that the participants are exposed to a number of different stimuli over time, so that this phenomenon may be understood in greater detail. Almost all perception is new to an infant. Thus when a child learns to recognise something or someone its environment (like a caregiver), it feels comforted in the familiarity. Children prefer to look at known faces, particularly when they have been separated from that comforting presence for even a short while (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). While this fact has been verified by multiple studies, there is no way to directly arrive at the reasons. Thus, researchers have used inductive methods to conclude that this behaviour helps the child feel secure. But as a child becomes familiar with some things, it also learns to appreciate any new stimulus by paying greater attention to it. Given using this information, Slater et al. (1990) has demonstrated that infants have a well organised understanding of their visual world. In particular, the study showed that even the youngest child can appreciate size consistency by testing infants’ preference for a similar looking but different sized object. In this study, new-born infants were exposed to a six sided cube at different distances, until the child was habituated. After this, the child was shown the original cube as well as a new cube of a different size. The babies studied preferred to look at the new cube, demonstrating awareness of size. As children interact with their visual world, they learn a number of principles through their experiences. At around 2 months they are able to understand that things that are partially occluded still exist (like in playing peek-a-boo), a few months later they have learnt to understand that items are separate even when they touch each other (by lifting one toy away from another), and soon after they are able to understand the effects of gravity (Slater & Oates, 2005). As they learn to move on their own, children learn to appreciate depth as they tumble and fall. Another seminal study was conducted by Gibson and Walk (1960) to demonstrate this. In this study, a thick sheet of glass was placed a meter above the ground. Half the glass has a checkerboard surface immediately below the glass and the other half had it at floor level. When babies were encouraged to crawl over both parts to reach their mothers; all babies crawled over the visually solid part, but hardly any tried to cross the visual drop. The researcher further found that those babies that did cross the supposed drop had only just begun to crawl, and had had little experience with depth in the real world. Studies like this one not only show that children learn quite complex notions at a rapid pace, but also highlight the role of experience in this learning. Although the Fantz (1963) study could not verify this, other researchers have found that Infants of all ages prefer human faces to most other stimuli (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). Studies have also found that children like to look at faces that are rated as more attractive by adult participants. These studies typically have the researcher show the child two photos – one rated more attractive and one rated less attractive by adults – and measure the amount of time the infant looks at each photo. It is supposed that this occurs because an attractive face is more “typical” or average in its features and looking at such faces helps the child learn about human faces (Slater & Oates, 2005). Inductive methods have led researcher to believe that it is understandable that an infant would be interested in learning about and interacting with faces, as this helps in establishing a rapport with the caregivers. Babies may also imitate expressions of caregivers for the same reason. While Initial research showed that babies prefer to look at female faces rather than male faces; when children with male primary caregivers were tested, they preferred to look at male faces (Slater & Oates, 2005). Thus, this new data shows that an infant’s preference is not innate, but is affected by the gender of the primary caregiver. As a child looks at and interacts with human faces, it becomes possible for the child to discriminate between different faces and to identify known faces from unknown ones. But this experience also helps in narrowing the perceptual window so that the infant’s experiences becomes specialised to the group that it has the most interaction with. This was demonstrated by Pascalis et al. (2002). The results of this study show that very young infants can discriminate between individual humans as well as individual monkeys, but older infants and adults do not have this ability. For this study, the researchers initially showed 11 adult participants, 30 6-month old infants and 30 9-month old infants a set of human and monkey faces during a familiarisation session. Later, they were showed pairs of pictures – one familiar and one new. The researchers measured the amount of time each participant looked at the new and the familiar stimulus. They found that the 6-month old infants fixated on the new stimuli for both human and monkey pictures; but the older infants and the adults fixated on new stimuli only for human faces. Thus, it may be said that even the youngest of infants have the ability to discriminate between different stimuli, and will make visual choices using this ability. But as the child grows, it starts to develop a greater understanding of the stimuli that surround it, and in the process seems to lose the ability to discriminate between members of unfamiliar. These results may also explain why people raised within a single racial community later claim that they find it difficult to discriminate between members of another race (although it is possible to learn about new groups through experience with them). Conclusion The data reviewed shows that even the youngest infants have a rather sophisticated understanding of their visual world. Children seem to be born with the ability to perceive many aspects of the world around them, but they learn to make sense of this information only later in life, as they grow and interact with these stimuli in a more direct manner (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011). Thus, while elements of visual information are perceived right from birth, the ability to use them seems to come at a later stage of an infant’s life. It is also evident from the presented data that researchers use a number of techniques to collect data from infants. These techniques are developed keeping in mind the limitations of the young participants; and try to reduce the amount of stress experienced by them. With the introduction of more advanced technology, researchers have been able to increase accuracy of measurements and improve methods of stimuli presentation. Most researchers try to use a positivist approach and use empirical data as far as possible. But while they are able to assess the facts of what infants prefer to look at and what circumstances can affect an infant’s preference; it is difficult to establish the reasons for these phenomenon directly. Thus, researchers may sometimes become necessary to use inductive methods to arrive at conclusions. References D. Bukatko, and M. W. Daehler. (2011) ‘Basic Learning and perception’, in Child Development: A Thematic Approach (6th ed.), Belmont: Cengage Learning. Slater, A. and Oates, J. (2005) ‘Sensation to perception’, in Oates, J., Wood, C. and Grayson, A. (eds) Psychological Development and Early Childhood, Oxford, Blackwell/The Open University. Fantz, R.L. (1963), ‘Reading A: Pattern vision in newborn infants’ in Slater and Oates (2005) pp. 124-126. Pascalis, O., de Haan, M. and Nelson, C. (2002), ‘Reading B: Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life?’ in Slater and Oates (2005) pp. 124-126. Gibson and Walk (1960), cited in Slater and Oates (2005) pp.107 – 108 Slater et al. (1990), cited in Slater and Oates (2005) pp.105 – 106 Read More