How Animals and Humans Aike Develop their Seeing Capabilities.

758 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: is perception innate or learned?

a) Describe 2 studies of perceptual development (12 marks). b) Assess the way in which such studies help to explain the development of perception (12 marks). In the following essay I intend to describe two studies of perceptual development. I then intend to assess such studies and how they help to explain the development of perception. By perceptual development, I mean how animals and humans alike develop their seeing capabilities.

This development of perception could be learnt or innate. By innate, I mean to be born with the ability. a) Gibson and Walk conducted a study in 1960. The study was investigating Depth Perception. The study involved a 6-month-old child, 24-hour-old chicks, kids and lambs.

Gibson and Walk used a 'Visual Cliff' to conduct the study. The 'Visual Cliff' was comprised of 2 floors. On one side there was a check-board pattern, on the other side there is glass floor. Below the glass floor there was another floor with check-board pattern. This was placed so that an illusion of a cliff and depth was created. At first the child was placed and was found to be reluctant to go onto the glass.

The child's reluctance could be seen as even with encouragement from the child's mother, the child refused to go onto the glass. The study was continued on chicks, kids and lambs. All subjects studied refused to go onto the glass. Held and Hein conducted a study in 1965. The study was investigating Depth Perception. The study involved two kittens.

The kittens were kept in the dark for a period of eight weeks since their birth and for three hours per day they were kept in a 'Kitten Carousel'. The kittens were given appropriate name. 'Passive Kitten' and Active Kitten' were their names. The Active Kitten was given the ability to move freely at it's own discretion, during the eight weeks. The Passive Kitten was unable to move freely during the eight weeks. Both Kittens were released into the light.

The Passive Kitten showed no evidence of perceiving depth. The Active Kitten did far better then the Passive Kitten. b) Studies like the above two help explain the development of perception. Studies do this by allowing us to understand if perception is learnt or an innate process. The first study suggested that their subjects could perceive Depth Perception. However the study did not clearly identify whether perception was innate or learnt.

Show More
Related

  • My Virtual Child Case Study

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of this assignment is to answer the three posed questions in regards to my Virtual Child, who I will refer to as Kieran throughout my assignment. I will be describing changes in his exploratory and problem solving behaviors as well as analyzing his temperament. I will also summarize his developmental assessment at nineteen months old that may differ from my perception of what was assessed through his developmental examiner. Kieran was at the age of eight months when I first used the object permanence test developed by Jean Piaget, in the aspect of sensorimotor development in both stage 3 and 4 of the Six Substages of Sensorimotor Development (Table 6-2, pg 154). At stage 3, infants begin to show greater interest in their world with objects becoming incorporated into what is called the secondary circular reaction where they start to learn about the actions associated with objects.

    Read More

  • Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter's Categorizing Risky Play

    1386 Words  | 3 Pages

    The subjects were observed to climb on structures and furthermore jumped from the different heights. Through the interviews Sandseter gathered that the children where frightened by climbing high and jumping down to the ground but was more exciting than going down the intended way. The second category is play with high speed, and this was commonly observed when children rode their bikes at high speeds or ran down hills. The risk comes from running into something or someone. The children describe the play with high speeds as scary, but continued to push the risk, as they would start to slide head first down the hill. Play with dangerous tools is the third category, as the children where aloud to work with knives and hammers. The children did not see this as risky play as they felt competent with the dangerous tools; the staff when interviewed suggested this as risky play, when the children would use the knives to whittle sticks. The fourth category of risky play is play near dangerous elements such as the ocean, cliffs and the fire pit in the preschools. Again the children did not see this as risky play but the staff saw children playing by the ocean and the fire pit was risky, as they feared the children falling in. Rough and tumble play is another category as children would play fight and wrestle. The children found expressed this as risky play as it was a scary activity but all agreed it was great fun. The last category of risky play is play where children can disappear or get lost. As the preschools where surrounded by forest the children where aloud to explore, they would not go alone because it was to scary but rather went in groups to eliminate the risk of getting lost. The six categories of risky play created by Sandseter’s study is the key factors of the

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud: Psychoanaalysis And Mind Theory

    1691 Words  | 4 Pages

    (2012). Perception, conscious and unconscious processes. In F. G. Barth, P. Giampieri-Deutsch & H. Klein (Eds.), Sensory perception: Mind and matter; sensory perception: Mind and matter (pp. 245-264, Chapter xi, 404 Pages) Springer Science + Business Media/SpringerWienNewYork, Vienna. Retrieved from http://vortex3.uco.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.vortex3.uco.edu/docview/1037892527?accountid=14516

    Read More

  • Child Development Observation

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this assignment I am going to describe a child observation that I have done in a nursery for twenty minutes in a play setting. I will explain the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic observation through the key developmental milestones based in Mary Sheridan (2005) check-list and provide a theoretical explanation to support the naturalistic observation.

    Read More

  • The Development of Object Permanence

    3475 Words  | 7 Pages

    Baillargeon, R., & Graber, M. (1987). Where’s the rabbit? 5.5 month-old infants’ representation of the height of a hidden object. Cognitive Development, 2, 375-392.

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Sensorimotor stage from birth to two years sees children form their knowledge of the world through physical interactions with their environment (Hoffnung et al. 2016, p. 48). During this stage children lack object permanence, which is the understanding that even when out of view

    Read More

  • Early Experience and Emotional Development

    393 Words  | 1 Pages

    The first experiment that took place ninety-two infants at the age of seven and three hundredths months were tested. They took the babies and lowered them to each side of a cliff where visual placing responses were recorded. As predicted the locomotive infants showed a wariness of heights but the pre-locomotive infants did not show wariness of heights. Every infant tested showed visual placing responses to the shallow side of the cliff as opposed to no infant tested showed placing responses on the deep side of the cliff.

    Read More

  • Early Childhood Development

    1847 Words  | 4 Pages

    The way the young, old, and infants look at things has been the subject of a number of studies for many years. These tendencies are referred to as visual preferences and in infants this study can be referred to as early visual perception. Though interest in the study of visual preferences has declined, significant progress has been made in this field. This study however has been very instrumental in helping scholars understand early childhood development issues. Among these issues is how visual preferences can help infants process the stimuli they come across. The issue of whether or not infants possess visual preference abilities after birth has also shown great interest among scholars. This paper seeks to cut through the arguments and delve into the factual evidence. The paper will consider how infants process as well as respond to visual stimuli in their environment. In addition, the paper seeks to establish how age and experience affects this process. These two factors will help correlate visual preference with cognition and perception in infants. The paper will mostly focus on how infants process stimuli with respect to visual preference.

    Read More

  • Successful Aging Elderly (SAE)

    2206 Words  | 5 Pages

    Hubel DH Wiesel TN. (1970), The period of susceptibility to the physiological effects of unilateral eyeclosure in kittens. J Physiol; 206: 419-36.

    Read More

  • Brain Development and Autism

    1774 Words  | 4 Pages

    of development, how we experience the world plays a role in our brain development. In recent

    Read More

  • The Phenomenology of Fodor or the Modularity of Merleau-Ponty

    2762 Words  | 6 Pages

    Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).

    Read More

  • Attachment Theory Of Attachment

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    The procedure, known as the ‘Strange Situation’, was conducted by observing the behavior of the infant in a series of eight episodes lasting approximately 3 minutes each:

    Read More

  • The Little Albert Experiment by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner

    1876 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Little Albert experiment has become a widely known case study that is continuously discussed by a large number of psychology professionals. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct one of the first experiments done with a child. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study, as Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible during the experiment. Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was to use principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, a variety of objects were used that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included a white rat, blocks, a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, wool, and a Santa Claus mask. Albert’s conditioning began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were determining whether other stimuli’s could cause fear.

    Read More

  • Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development

    1634 Words  | 4 Pages

    Piaget described this stage to be where the infant is making sense of the world and during this stage the infant's knowledge is limited. This is where the main senses come into play, such as touch, taste, smell etc. At this stage sport to an infant is a sensory experience, with the use of a ball for example for exploration. Object permanence was highlighted by Piaget as one of the most important accomplishments of the sensorimotor stage. Object permanence is an infant's understanding that objects exists even if the object can not be heard or seen. For example with the game Hide and Seek, a younger infant will simply believe that the person hiding has completely vanished and will be shocked once that person is visible again whereas an older infant who understands object per...

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget's Four Stages Of Cognitive Development

    888 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the birth to two years stage children are learning about the world through their sensations and through their movements. One of the most influential theorist’s Jean Piaget developed four important stages of cognitive development. In the first stage, known as the sensorimotor stage, direct sensory experiences are occurring. Motor actions are occurring as well, which are important for the learning of children as they get older. Since infants at this age are learning through their movements they are using basic actions such as grasping onto objects with their hands, sucking, listening and observing the world around them. With these movements, they are beginning to understand that their actions cause things to happen around them. When this

    Read More

More about How Animals and Humans Aike Develop their Seeing Capabilities.

Open Document