PSYC20008 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: 18 Months, Dependent And Independent Variables, Egocentrism
10 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 3
- William James (1890): a “buzzing, blooming, confusion”
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- Newborn reflexes: inborn, automatic responses to different forms of stimulation; gives a
quick indication of neurological status; some may be refined over time to become
complex patterns of behaviour, others may drop out
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- Infants can swim, pedal around, but swimming reflex disappears after 6 months
- Sight: infants focal length - 14 cm; poor acuity - 20/600; colour perception by 1 month;
depth perception (binocular vision, pictorial depth); innate or learnt? (unknown)
- Touch: sources of info / info about what infants know about their world; newborn
sensitive to temperature change; sensitivity to pain controversial (e.g. circumcision),
physiological indicators (crying, stress hormones, hard to comfort, etc) suggest pain, not
possible to assess cognitive components of pain (mirror neurons); Tiffany Field’s
research shows positive benefits of massage for preterm infants, infants of depressed
mums, infants suffered abuse, HIV infants, infants exposed to drugs (heroin babies).
- Sound: DeCasper shows newborns discriminate mum’s voice from female stranger, and
discriminate familiar from novel story read by mum; Eimas & Jusyck show preparedness
for language –an infant can discriminate sounds of speech in own language from other
languages at 6 months.
- Taste: differences in mouth chemistry make sensory experience different for infants:
taste chemistry changes throughout childhood reaching adult form by early adolescence;
e.g., salty fluid that would be rejected by older children and adults will be ingested by
infants
- Smell: MacFarlane shows breastfed newborns discriminate, and prefer (turn toward),
their mum’s scent than lactating stranger; Cernoch & Porter shows bottle fed infants
prefer (turn toward) scent of lactating females.
- reasonable to suggest that sensory abilities may scaffold the development of some
cognitive and social competencies
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