Developmental Psychology Psy 307 Fall 2015 Infant Information Processing Sara Dowd B A Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student Texas A M University Perception First step of information processing is perception Perception can be defined through 3 steps 1 Stimulation senses 2 Organization making sense of all the pieces of stimuli processed in step 1 3 Interpretation higher levels of thinking what does it mean Implications How might this picture be perceived differently by different people At what stage of perception would these differences arise We don t simply see we look Gibson 1988 Perception Perception in general or each of the specific steps is not necessarily automatic Your occipital lobe might process the stimulus but you might not allocate the attention necessary to analyze what your brain has processed on a higher level Perceptual Selectivity Process by which individuals select from amongst the various stimuli vying for their attention Can be conscious For example as a result of jadedness Or unconscious For example the cocktail party effect Perception and Affordances The environment affords opportunities for perception and interaction which are offered by a person place or object within that environment These are appropriately called affordances Perceptual Selection of which affordance will be fully perceived and or acted upon is related to 4 factors Sensory awareness Immediate motivation Current development for example age Past experience more generally culture Infant example of Perceptual Selection Visual Cliff Short Video https www youtube com watch v p6cqNhHrMJA Which stimuli do the babies in the video select and act upon Which do they ignore At what stage of perception does this particular perceptual selection take place More on babies and Perceptual Selection All babies are attracted to two kinds of affordances in particular 1 Things that move AKA Dynamic perception A focus on movement and change 2 People People Preference The universal principle of infant perception tied to evolution Mother dependency Information Processing Information processing theory Involves incremental details and step by step description of the mechanisms of thought Adds insight to understanding of cognition at every age Modeled on computer functioning Environment inputs data transformed by our senses analyzed by our cognitions stored saved memory and can be retrieved and transformed using mental programs More simply Information Processing in Infants Infant deviance from Information Processing paradigm According to classical development theory infants do not store memories in their first year Freud childhood amnesia However Developmentalists now agree that very young infants CAN remember if the following conditions are met 1 Experimental conditions are similar to real life 2 Motivation is high 3 Special measure aid memory retrieval In summary although infant memory is fragile it can be activated with reminders repetition and retrieval cues Can you prove Freud wrong What is your earliest memory Memory To clarify Infants can process information and store conclusions Infants can also remember specific events and patterns Early researchers may have overlooked these memory abilities due to a failure to differentiate between Implicit memories Examples Priming procedural repetition induced motor memories conditioning Explicit memories Examples Episodic and semantic explicit learning Patricia Kuhl The linguistic genius of babies Ted Talk 14 minutes If we have time watch in class If not you should watch on your own http www youtube com watch v G2XBIkHW954 Language What Develops in the First 1 2 Years Listening Before birth Language learning via brain organization and hearing may be innate Newborn Preference for speech sounds and mother s language gradual selective listening Around 6 months Ability to distinguish sounds and gestures in own language Responding Babbling Involves repetition of certain syllables such as ba ba ba that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old Begins to sound like native language around 12 months Is experience expectant how so Gesturing All infants gesture Concepts with gesture expressed sooner than via speech Pointing emerges in human babies around 10 months Language Learning 1 2 years First words Gradual beginings About 1 year Speak a few words 6 15 months Understand 10 times more words than produced 12 months Begin to use holophrasis and recognize vocalization from universal to language specific Examples of holophrasis Naming explosion Once spoken vocabulary reaches about 50 words it builds quickly at a rate of 50 to 100 words per month 21 month olds say twice as many words as 18 month old Cultural Difference in Language Cultural and family variation exists in child directed speech Use Infants seek the best available language teachers Music and its tempo a common language learning tool is culture specific Cultural difference in language use Infants differ in use of various parts of speech Ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies Young children are sensitive to the sounds of words accents for instance Grammar Includes all the devices by which words communicate meaning Becomes obvious in holophrasis between 18 and 24 months Correlates with size of vocabulary Syntax related to semantics In syntax vs semantics there is a debate in the extant literature surrounding the idea that perhaps syntactical learning is implicit What do you think If you buy it is this only true for babies or for adults as well What about semantics Language Leaning Mastering two languages Quantity of speech in both languages the child hears is crucial Children implicitly track the number of words and phrases and learn those expressed most often Bilingual toddlers realize differences between languages adjusting tone pronunciation cadence and vocabulary when speaking to a monolingual person Language Development video Watch 8 of 16 minutes in class if we have time You should watch the whole video at home https www youtube com watch v N wXdW6xNN8 Theories of Language Learning Theory Infants need1 to be taught B F Skinner 1957 noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced Parents are expert teachers Other caregivers help them teach children to speak Well taught infants become well spoken children If adults want children who speak understand and later read well they must talk to their infants Frequent repetition of words is instructive especially when words are linked to the pleasures of