KIN 362 Exam Four Notes Motor Sensory and Perceptual Development Dynamic Systems View Seeks to explain how motor behaviors are assembled for perceiving and acting Motivation leads to new motor behavior a convergence of Nervous system development Body s physical properties Child s motivation to reach goal Environmental support for the skill Reflexes Built in reactions to stimuli Govern newborn s movements Genetically carried survival mechanisms Allow adaptation to environment Provides opportunity to learn Some disappear e g grasping some last throughout life e g coughing Gross Motor Skills Motor skills that involve large muscle activities milestones achieved Infancy Development of posture Locomotion and crawling Learning to walk Help of caregivers important cultural variation exists More skilled and mobile in second year Improved walking running jumping climbing learn organized sports skills Childhood Positive and negative sport outcomes Movement smoother with age Adolescence Skills continue to improve Adulthood Peak performance of most sports before 30 Biological functions decline with age Guidelines for Parents and Coaches of Children in Sports Fine Motor Skills Involves more finely tuned movements such as finger dexterity Infancy Reaching and grasping Size and shape of object matters Experience affects perceptions and vision Early Childhood Pick up small objects Some difficulty building towers Age 5 hand arm fingers move together Childhood and adolescence Writing and drawing skills emerge improve Steadier at age 7 more precise movements By 10 12 can do quality crafts master difficult piece on musical instrument Speed may decline in middle and late adulthood but most use compensation Older adults can still learn new motor tasks Adulthood strategies Handedness Genetic inheritance proposed unproven Preference of using one hand over other Right handedness dominant in all cultures Right hand preference in thumb sucking begins in the womb Head turning preference in newborns Preference later leads to handedness Handedness the Brain and Cognitive Abilities 95 of right handed primarily process speech in left hemisphere Left handed Are more likely to have reading problems Show more variation Have better spatial skills More common among mathematicians musicians artists and architects What are sensation and perception Sensation Occurs when information contacts sensory receptors Perception Interpretation of sensation The Ecological View perform activities Studying Infant Perception to it stimuli People directly perceive information in the world around them Perception brings people in contact with the environment to interact with it and adapt All objects have affordances opportunities for interaction offered by objects necessary to Visual preference method To determine if infants can distinguish between various Habituation and Dishabituation Habituation decreased responsiveness to stimulus Dishabituation recovery of habituated response Tracking moving eyes and or head to follow moving objects Videotape equipment high speed computers Infants Visual Perception Vision in Childhood Improved color detection visual expectations controlling eye movements for reading Preschoolers may be farsighted Signs of vision problems Rubbing eyes blinking squinting Closing one eye tilting head to see thrusting head forward to see Irritability at games requiring distance vision Aging Vision in Adulthood Loss of Accommodation presbyopia Decreased blood supply to eye smaller visual field increased blind spot Slower dark adaptation decline in motion sensitivity Declining color vision greens blues vi Declining depth perception problems with steps or curbs Diseases of the Eye eye Hearing Cataracts thickening eye lens that causes vision to become cloudy opaque distorted Glaucoma damage to optic nerve because of pressure created by buildup of fluid in Macular degeneration involves deterioration of retina Fetus hears in last 2 months of pregnancy Newborns Cannot hear soft sounds well Display auditory preferences Sensitive to human speech Infants less sensitive to sound pitch Most children s hearing is inadequate Otitis Media middle ear infection Adolescence Adulthood Most have excellent hearing loud sounds poses risks Decline begins about age 40 Males lose sensitivity to high pitched sounds sooner than females Gender differences may be due to occupation Treatment includes hearing aids Sensory Perceptual Development Sensation vs Perception Sensation is the neural activity triggered by a stimulus activating a sensory receptor It results in sensory nerve impulses traveling the sensory nerve pathways to the brain Perception is a multistage process in the central nervous system It includes selection processing organization and integration of information received from the senses Identical sensations can yield different perceptions Some view perception and action or movement as inseparable Developmentalists still have much to learn about the role of movement in perceptual Perception Gives Meaning development Sensory Systems Individual structural constraints Here focus on visual auditory and kinesthetic senses Visual Development Sensation Infants have functionally useful vision By 6 months of age vision is adequate for locomotion through the environment Acuity Acuity is sharpness of sight Acuity is approximately 20 30 by age 5 years and 20 20 by age 10 In first month 5 of adult level 20 400 Infant can differentiate facial features at 20 in An axial length that is too short or too long results in farsightedness or nearsightedness An imperfect curvature of the cornea also causes blurred vision a condition known as Visual Development respectively astigmatism Measurement of Visual Acuity be manipulated Often involves reading block letters where the size of spaces between parts of letters can Expressed on the Snellen scale in which 20 20 vision requires no correction Optokinetic nystagmus a reflex can be used with infants and toddlers Assessment of Perception in Infancy Preferential looking Attention wanders from objects to which the infant is habituated Infants look at new or novel over familiar objects Researchers habituate an infant to an object or pattern Researchers present an old object or pattern and a new one If infants can detect a difference they tend to look at the new object Visual Change w Aging Declines in vision have implications for skill performance as well as tasks of everyday living Presbyopia affects the