INFANCY: SENSATION, PERCEPTION, AND LEARNING

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Chapter 5b

• INFANCY SENSATION, PERCEPTION, AND LEARNING

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Evaluating Newborns Health and Capabilities

• Behavioral Assessments
• Autonomic changes
• Sucking pattern
• Visual Preference
• Habituation
• Eye Movements
• Face Scanning

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Questions In Infant Learning

• When do infants start to learn (prenatally and
  neonatally)
• How important is it to stimulate infant learning?
  
• Think about issues of preparedness versus
  building on skills
• In what ways do infants learn?
• Be familiar with chart p.155 of book

4
When do Babies Start to Learn?

• Prenatal Learning
• Neonatal Learning
• Autonomic changes
• Sucking pattern
• Visual preference method
• Habituation
• Eye movements
• Face scanning

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Sensory Learning

• Hearing
• Vision
• Taste
• Smell
• Touch/Pain
• Intermodal Perception

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The Plasticity of the Brain

• Brain size and function can be modified by
  experience
• Impoverishment versus enrichment
• How brain development in one area may contribute
  to learning in another

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Ways that Infants Learn

• Through their senses
• Classical and Operant Conditioning
• Imitation
• Memory

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Classical and Operant Conditioning

• Classical Pair a conditioned stimulus that
  elicits a conditioned response with an
  unconditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned
  stimulus elicits the unconditioned response (now
  conditioned response) eventually with enough
  pairings
• Operant Follow a babys response with a reward
  or punishment, and one can condition the behavior
  to either increase (reinforcement) or decrease
  (punishment).

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Imitation

• Definition
• Two theories about imitation development
• Research
• Components required for imitation

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Memory

• Short-term versus long-term infants have both
• Research
• Ways to trigger memory/improve memory skills
• Does memory at early ages indicate that these
  things will be remembered later in life, or is
  early memory simply a reflection of developing
  memory skills?