Chapter Three

Tools for Exploring the World:

Physical, Perceptual, and Motor
Development
 3.4 Perception:
Learning Objectives

• Are infants able to smell, to taste, and to

experience pain?
• Can infants hear? How do they use sound to
locate objects?
• How well can infants see? Can they see color
and depth?
• How do infants coordinate information
between different sensory modalities, such as
between vision and hearing?
 Coming to Know the World:
Smell and Taste Perception

• Perception: brain processes receiving, selecting,

modifying, and organizing sensory inputs
• Newborns have keen senses of smell and taste
– Odors: they distinguish pleasant from unpleasant,
or familiar from unfamiliar (e.g., mother’s breast or
perfume)
– Taste: they differentiate among salty, sour, bitter,
sweet, and changes in mother’s breast milk
– Facial reactions (e.g., lip licking) show they have a
“sweet tooth”
 Coming to Know the World:
Smell and Taste Perception

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YBheuH
ma8I
• Baby taste lemon
 Coming to Know the World:
Touch and Pain

• Babies react to touch with reflexes and other

movements
• In reaction to painful stimuli, babies manifest
the pain cry – a sudden, high-pitched wail –
and they are not easily soothed
 Coming to Know the World: Hearing

• Startle reactions suggest that infants are

sensitive to sound
• Infants hear less well than adults
• They best hear pitches in the range of human
speech (neither high nor low pitches) and
differentiate consonants from vowels
• They prefer pleasant more than unpleasant
melodies and can remember songs
• By 4 months, they recognize their own names
 Coming to Know the World: Seeing

• Newborns respond to light and track moving

objects with their eyes
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCFzqcje
838&feature=relmfu
 Coming to Know the World: Seeing

• Visual acuity 視覺清晰度 (clarity of vision) is the

smallest pattern that can be distinguished
dependably
• Infants at 1 month see at 20 feet what adults see
at 200-400 feet
• By 1 year, infants’ visual acuity is the same as
adults
Visual acuity measurement
 Coming to Know the World: Color

• Cones 錐細胞 : sets of neurons located along

the retina at the back of the eye, each
specialized to one of the three light
wavelengths
• Newborns perceive few colors
• 3- to 4-month-old infants can perceive colors
similarly to adults
 Coming to Know the World: Depth
Perception 深度知覺

• Visual cliff 視覺懸崖 research

– 6-week-olds react with interest to
differences in depth (heart rate
deceleration)
– By 7 months, they show more fear than
interest to the cliff’s deep end (heart rate
acceleration and refusal to cross the deep
side)
 Coming to Know the World: Depth
Perception 深度知覺

• Visual cliff 視覺懸崖 research

– Fear of depth seems to develop around the
time babies can crawl
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA&ab_cha
nnel=SciFri
 Coming to Know the World: Depth
Perception (cont’d)

Seven cues adults use to infer depth

Cues Closer compared to distant objects...
1. Kinetic cues 運動線索 … appear larger while moving
2. Visual expansion 視覺擴張 … fill more of the retina
3. Motion parallax 移動視差 … move faster
4. Retinal disparity 視網膜視差 … yield greater disparity
5. Sound … sound louder
Pictorial cues
6. Linear perspective 直線透視 … have wider parallel lines
7. Texture gradient 質地梯度 … are coarser and distinctly textured
• linear
perspective
Texture gradient
 Coming to Know the World: Depth
Perception (cont’d)

• Few-week old babies use kinetic, visual

expansion, and motion parallax weeks after
birth to see depth
• Infants use sound to accurately gauge depth
• 4- to 6-month-old babies use retinal disparity
• 7-month-old babies use linear perspective
and texture gradient to see depth
 Coming to Know the World:
Perceiving Objects

• Perceiving objects involves interpreting

patterns of lines, textures, and colors
• Object perception is limited in newborns, but
develops rapidly in the first few months
• By 4 months, infants use several cues to
discern that a stimulus is an object
– elements that move together
– similar colors and textures
– aligned edges
• Perceiving
objects
 Perceiving Faces

• Newborns prefer to look at moving faces,

suggesting an innate attraction to them
• By 4 weeks, infants track all moving
stimuli, including faces and nonfaces
• Before 6 months, infants have a prototype
of a face that includes both human and
nonhuman faces
 Perceiving Faces

• Between 6 to 12 months, the prototype is

fine-tuned to reflect familiar faces, which they
prefer viewing
• By 7 to 8 months, infants process faces
similarly to adults, as a unique arrangement
of features
 Integrating Sensory Information

• Infants visually recognize objects they

only touched previously
• Infants soon begin to perceive the link
between visual images and sounds
 Integrating Sensory Information

• Intersensory redundancy 跨感官間的重

疊 : simultaneously available multimodal
sensory information (e.g., sight, sound,
touch)
– Infants perceive best when sensory
information is redundant
– Why? Brain regions specialized for a
specific sense are not yet developed
 3.5 Becoming Self-Aware:
Learning Objectives

• When do children begin to realize that they

exist?
• What are toddlers’ and preschoolers’ self-
concepts like?
• When do preschool children begin to acquire
a theory of mind?
 Origins of Self-Concept

Self-awareness 自我覺識
• Mirror test: red rouge surreptitiously rubbed
on child’s nose; child placed in front of mirror
and behavior is observed
– 9-month-old infants smile at the image in
the mirror but do not seem to recognize it
as themselves
– By 15-24 months, infants see the image in
the mirror and touch their own nose,
suggesting they know the image is theirs
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2I0kw
Sua44&feature=related
 Origins of Self-Concept (cont’d)

• Toddlers look more at photographs of

themselves than other children
• Toddlers refer to themselves by name and
use personal pronouns “I” or “me”
• They use “I” in the present and in the past,
showing awareness of the self’s continuity over
time
• Toddlers understand ownership, indicated by
use of “mine” in reference to possessions
It’s mine.
 Origins of Self-Concept (cont’d)

• Preschoolers describe the self in

terms of possessions, physical
characteristics, preferences, and
competencies
 Theory of Mind (TOM) 心智理論

• Theory of mind: naïve understanding of the

relationship between mind and behavior
• Develops in three phases (Wellman, 1993,
2002)
– Phase 1: by 2 years, aware of desires;
speak of wants and likes
• Understand that people have desires and that
desires cause behavior (e.g., “Ew peas; I not
eat.”)
 Theory of Mind (TOM) 心智理論

– Phase 2: by 3 years, distinguish the

mental from physical world
• Use mental verbs (“think”, “believe”,
“forget”), but still emphasize desires as
main causes of behavior
– Phase 3: by 4 years, know that
behavior can be based on beliefs
about events, even if belief is false
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

False belief tasks (Sally & Ann)

– Child hears story about Sally, who puts ball in the
basket and leaves
– Child told the ball is moved from the basket to the
box, which Sally does not know
– Child is asked, “When Sally comes back, where will
Sally look for the ball ”
• 3 &1/2-year-olds: Sally will look in the box
(wrong)
• 4-year-olds: Sally will look in the basket
(correct)
False-belief task
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

False belief tasks (crayons)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLubgpY
2_w
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

How does TOM develop?

• Could reflect expanding mental state language
and grammatical skills
• Might be due to interactions with others, who
provide insights into people with different mental
states, perspectives, feelings, intentions, moods
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

TOM and autism 自閉

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
– Echoic speech and later language acquisition
– Obsessive and compulsive interest in objects
– Disinterest in other people
– Awkward social interactions with other people
– Do not follow rules governing social interactions
– Symptoms emerge around 18 to 24 months
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (cont’d)

– Diagnosed in 1 out of 200-300 U.S. children
– 80% of diagnoses are in boys
– Is heritable
– Atypical brain functioning; perhaps abnormal
neurotransmitter levels
– Cannot be cured, but medications and a supportive
environment help a lot
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjkTQtggL
H4&feature=related
 Theory of Mind (TOM) (cont’d)

• ASD and TOM

– Very slowly grasp false belief
– Some argue they may not have a TOM
» mindblindness is a defining feature of ASD
– Some attribute mindblindedness to other deficits
» cannot inhibit irrelevant actions
» have problems shifting smoothly between actions
– Some attribute to a “focused” processing style
» too much emphasis on perceptual details instead
of the bigger coherent picture
 觀察嬰兒目光有助於自閉症的預判

• https://cn.ny
times.com/h
ealth/20140
218/t18autis
m/zh-hant/
• 出生時沒有
差異
• 2 至 6 個月
少注視他人
眼睛