In order to be selective in attending to a complex environment infants need to be capable of engaging and disengaging in attention. When newborns are awake and alert their attention is not random it is organised and selective (Ruff & Rothbart, 2001). Attention engagement is an effortful engagement with stimuli; it is also referred to as sustained attention (Stechlar & Latz, 1966). The ability to detect changes in stimuli over sustained periods requires effort (Ruff & Rothbart, 2001). Attention disengagement refers to when attention to a stimulus is terminated (Colombo, 2001). Attention disengagement is necessary in order to shift attention to other aspects of the environment. Disengagement is often studied with a spatial cuing paradigm (Butcher, Kalverboer, & Geuze, 2000). In this essay the subcortical and cortical visual pathways will be discussed. The subcortical system is devoted mainly to processing information received from the central area of the retina (Bronson, 1974). The cortical system is concerned with the analysis and encoding of complex visual patterns (Bronson, 1974). This essay will discuss research that has shown the subcortical visual system components to be more developed at birth than those in the cortical system. This essay introduces the basic processes of attention, the methods that are used to assess them, and the brain structures involved. This essay will further discuss the importance of developmental changes in attentional processes.
Research studies have shown infants can engage in obligatory attention. Stechlar and Latz (1966) observed three infants for three weeks almost every day following birth. The infants were presented with three types of visual stimuli such as; black and white drawings of fac...
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...om subcortical to cortical processing has been evaluated throughout this essay. Studies have shown that infants are able to engage but the infants gaze is captured by salient contours and only limited aspects of a stimulus are attended to and encoded. Research has highlighted that stimulus orienting is exogenously controlled in new-borns. Other research studies have argued the visual system changes rapidly after birth and there is not an absence of cortical functioning in the newborn and proposed a complex model to explain the layers of the visual cortex (Johnson, 1990). Furthermore, the research has concluded that the ability to disengage from attention occurs during 6-14 weeks and that disengaging attention is a discontinuous process. Research on the disengaging and engaging attention has shown human perception reflects continued neural plasticity (Bronson, 1974).
A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...
Hubel and Wiesel’s research surrounding area V1 of the primary visual cortex provided one of the first descriptions of the receptive fields in mammals. By flashing various lines along the receptive field, Hubel and Wiesel were able to classify cortical neurons into two distinct groups; simple and complex (Hubel & Wiesel, 1963). The use of manually mapping the receptive fields with simple dots, lines and edges meant that they not only discovered orientation tuning in single neurons, but also described the columnar organisation of ocular dominance and orientation preferences in the cerebral cortex (Ringach, 2004). Although Hubel and Wiesel’s findings were an extreme advance in our understanding of the visual cortex (Wurtz, 2009), it became apparent that there were cells in the visual system that responded to stimuli far more complicated than orientated lines meaning that the cells in area V1 were much more modifiable than Hubel and Wiesel had suggested. In this essay, Hubel and Wiesel’s classic receptive field shall be discussed along with reasons as to why it can no longer offer us a satisfactory explanation into visual perception. First to be discussed are the specific types of cells which were defined in Hubel and Wiesel’s classic experiment into the striate cortex.
Understanding of Children with Congenital Profound Visual Impairment." British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22.1 (2004): 1-17.
brain tissue in the areas of the brain associated with attention; however, as they grow up the
Research in this field found preferential differences in an adult when their eye gaze is directed towards an object, as opposed to faces with eye gaze averted from an object, in neonates (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). Reid and Striano (2005) examined 4-month-old infants looking at adult faces with their eye gaze directed towards an object and averted away from an object. It was found that infants looked substantially shorter at the object that was cued by the eye gaze. They concluded that the cued object was familiar compared with the uncued object which was seen as novel and therefore attracted more attention. Reid, Striano, Kaufman, and Johnson (2004) expanded upon previous research and investigated neural activity using event related potentials to measure an infants’ reaction to direct and averted eye gaze. A positive slow wave measure was adopted and it was found that the amplitude was larger for the averted eye gaze condition compared against the direct eye gaze condition. This increase indicated that the averted eye gaze was seen as novel compared to the direct eye gaze, substantiating what had been found in previous research.
This study was conducted by showing the infants videos that depicted discriminable individuals doing repetitive tasks, such as brushing their teeth (Bahrick & Newell, 2008). The faces of the individuals doing these tasks were oriented in three different ways: left, right, and center. The infants were exposed to the same video action to help them get familiar with the action. Once familiarization was complete, the infants were exposed to the familiar stimulus and a novel stimulus of the same action (Bahrick & Newell, 2008). The results for this experiment showed that the infants who had a longer period of time being familiarized with a video were able to discriminate between faces when shown with an action than those with a shorter familiarization time period (Bahrick & Newell, 2008). These findings can help conclude that infants have poor facial recognition when only presented with faces, but the recognition can be improved when the faces are associated with a certain, familiar action (Bahrick & Newell, 2008). Lastly, further research has been conducted that relates to the specificity of species with facial recognition in
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.
Hepper, P. (2007). Basic methods in infant research. In A. Slater & M. Lewis (Eds.), Introduction to Infant Development (2nd ed.) (pp. 41-62). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Baillargeon, R., & DeVos, J. (1991). Object permanence in 3.5 and 4.5-month-old infants: further evidence. Child Development, 62, 1227-1246.
After being home with Peyton for three months, returning to work was our family’s only option financially speaking, and we decided to hire a babysitter for Peyton. Peyton established an interest in her surroundings. This is known as the differentiation theory when infants actively search for invariant features of their environment (Harris, Sara). She smiles at familiar people, toys and animals and lead to develop many really cute habits. Peyton established a new focus; she concentrated her eyes on me and spends plenty of time studying my face and the face of anyone who comes close to her. This is an example of the pre attachment phase, which is when a newborn engages in close contact with humans who comfort them.
This exploration of strabismus has shown that the brain is a very active participant in determining our perception of the world around us. Visual informati on received by the eye is only part of the story, the brain takes these images and selects what is useful, discarding (strabismus) as well as adding (blind spot) information, thus, constructing our visual experience.
This study will enable individuals to get more precise, specific details on how color is developing in early infants. By making this information available to the public, it could help parents further understand their child and what changes are going on in the developmental stages. It could also help the consumer production by producing stimulating child toys at different stages of color development.
With time progressing, the infant refines their movement with external stimuli. Also, if anyone has been with an infant, they quickly learn how the baby will gain the knowledge how if they repeat a particular action is rewarded, the more likely the action will be repeated. During this stage, the infant maintains the concept where the object of their attention no longer exists once it leaves the baby’s line of sight or sound. After the infant matures at this stage, they realize the object of attention still exists once it goes beyond the infant’s line-of-sight. They will begin to understand how the object which kept their attention is not only still there, but the infant will be able to be away from the object for a longer period. (DeWolfe, 2015)
The human body is divided into many different parts called organs. All of the parts are controlled by an organ called the brain, which is located in the head. The brain weighs about 2. 75 pounds, and has a whitish-pink appearance. The brain is made up of many cells, and is the control centre of the body. The brain flashes messages out to all the other parts of the body.
Infancy involves rapid growth of the brain. This is a time when learning occurs through environmental cues, crying, and most importantly, the mother or other primary caregiver. This early learning or attachment between infants and their mothers or primary caregivers has a significant impact on the infant’s development. A primary caregiver’s ability to connect with an infant has significant developmental outcomes that have an impact on cognition and learning (Snyder, Shapiro, & Treleaven, 2012).