Deck 4: Infant Perception and Cognition

Question 1

What was revealed in research conducted by Walton and her colleagues (1992) when 12- to 36-hr-old infants would vary their rate of sucking more to see a picture of their mother's face than that of another woman?

A) Nothing was revealed in this research.
B) Newborns learn a preference for the mothers' faces shortly after birth.
C) The longer infant's engaged in sucking behavior, the longer it took them to identify their mother's face.
D) Sucking behavior has nothing to do with face recognition.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Human infants share with other animals a symbolic system for thinking about quantities in a precise and intuitive way, referred to as the approximate number system.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Why did Kuhl (2007) describe young infants as "citizens of the world?"

A) Infants come into the world with the ability to perceive most, if not all, of the phonemes found in all human languages suggesting that they seem equally ready and able to acquire any of the world's 6,000 or so languages.
B) Infants born into the world automatically become a citizen of the world by becoming a member of the human race.
C) Infants lack innate ability to speak language and therefore need others to help them.
D) Infants lack innate ability to speak language because there are too many phonemes for them to learn.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Infants display a degree of size and shape constancy, which indicates human infants are well prepared at birth for making sense of physical objects.

Question 5

Research by Fantz (1958. 1961) revealed what about infants' visual preference?

A) Infants do not see until the 4 month of age.
B) Babies younger than 1 week cannot tell the difference between visual stimuli.
C) Babies younger than 1 week can tell the difference between stimuli such as schematic face, a bull's eye pattern, and an unpatterned disk.
D) Infants do not see color during the first 3 months of life much like dogs.

Question 6

What is the concept known as whereby newborns move their heads and eyes in the direction of a sound, as if they wish to see what all the noise is about?

A) intrasensory integration
B) intersensory integration
C) modality authentication
D) modality discrimination

Question 7

What is the externality effect?

A) The tendency of 1-month-old infants to direct their attention primarily to the outside of a figure and spend little time inspecting internal features.
B) The tendency of 1 month infants to be aware of their external environment.
C) The tendency of infants at any age to direct their attention where they so desire.
D) The inability of infants to direct their attention to various stimuli.

Question 8

According to Baillargeon, infants possess an innate idea called the principle of persistence, which is defined as objects not only exist continuously and remain cohesive, they also retain their individual properties.

Question 9

According to the core knowledge systems perspective, which of the following is not one of the systems to represent and make inferences about relevant aspects of their surrounding environment?

A) inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions
B) persons and their actions
C) numbers representation
D) animals and their actions

Question 10

Object permanence is a cognitive skill not necessary for normal intellectual functioning in all human cultures.

Question 11

What did Friedman's (1972) studies on habituation/dishabituation reveal?

A) Infants do not have visual memory.
B) Newborns have limited visual memory for color only.
C) Visual memory is within the capability of many human newborns, although the possibility exists that many infants do not possess such memory until several weeks after birth.
D) Habituation/dishabituation doesn't have anything to do with memory of any sort.

Question 12

Spatiotemporal characteristics may play a central role in defining objects to sound infants, with shape and color being unimportant.

Question 13

According to the text, how is schema defined?

A) an exact copy of a stimulus
B) an exact copy of a stimulus depicting the infants ideas held in memory
C) a representation of event perceived and interpreted by the infant
D) a representation of an event that preserves the temporal and spatial arrangement of its distinctive elements without necessarily being isomorphic with the event

Question 14

According to many research studies, infants enter the world with some auditory biases. Which one of the following was not identified in the textbook as one of the auditory biases?

A) Infants appear to be more sensitive to high-frequency than to low-frequency tones.
B) Infants less than 1 week old have been shown to recognize their mothers' voices.
C) infants who heard stories being read to them by their mothers during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy were able to discriminate between that story and another.
D) Infants from 1 to 3 months old prefer nurses rhymes that were read to them while in utero.

Question 15

Which of the following is the definition of the Goldilocks effect?

A) Infants take an active role in sampling their environment looking longer at stimuli that are neither too simple nor too complex.
B) Infants' understanding of this classic story.
C) Infants' first introduction to porridge.
D) A visual discrimination task to test for the color gold.

Question 16

Compared to normally treated preterm babies very small preterm infants who receive extra tactile stimulation

A) gain more weight, spend more time awake and display more advanced cognitive and motor skills.
B) do not gain weight, spend more time awake and only display more advanced motor skills.
C) fain less weight, spend more time in fitful sleep and display only more advanced cognitive skills.
D) appear to be very similar in all dimensions.

Question 17

With regard to vision in newborns, research studies indicate all except for

A) that newborns can discriminate differences in intensity of light.
B) can track a moving object.
C) likely can see differences between contrasting colors.
D) can make the visual distinction between mom and dad.

Question 18

What was revealed according to research by Morton and Johnson (1991) among other various studies regarding the development of face processing?

A) Neonates find highly moving faces with low-contrast definition particularly attractive stimuli.
B) Neonates find highly moving faces with low contrast definition particularly neutral stimuli.
C) Neonates find slowly moving faces with high-contrast definition particularly attractive stimuli.
D) Neonates find slowly moving faces with high-contrast definition particularly neutral stimuli.

Question 19

Which of the following is not true regarding accommodation or focusing of the lens?

A) Is relatively poor at birth.
B) Most of what newborns look at they see unclearly.
C) Under favorable stimulus conditions, accommodation is adult like by as early as 3 months of age.
D) Is relatively strong at birth.

Question 20

Although the fovea of a newborn is larger than that of an adult, which of the following is not true?

A) Individual cells are arranged differently.
B) Cells are very similar in size and shape during eye development.
C) Cells vary in size and shape.
D) Cones are more widely distributed in the fovea of newborns relative to adults.

Question 21

Very young infants can detect differences in numerosity-that is, they can tell the difference between two arrays that differ in the number of objects they contain.

Question 22

The chemical senses (olfaction and taste) tend to develop early and are quite well developed shortly after birth.

Question 23

Discuss the arguments against core knowledge and provide examples.

Question 24

Six-month-old infants cannot tell the difference between quantities larger than four.

Question 25

Explain and support the notion that 5-month-old babies' concept of numerosity allows them to keep track of small changes in quantities, a behavior that looks like an understanding of how to add and subtract.

Question 26

Habituation refers to the increase in response as a result of repeated presentation of a stimulus.

Question 27

Dishabituation occurs when a new stimulus is presented that increases the level of responding.

Question 28

Explain the concept of object permanence in young infants using Baillargeon's results from his work.

Question 29

According to the core knowledge systems perspective, human infants are endowed with at least three core knowledge systems to represent and make inferences about relevant aspects of their surrounding environment. Explain these core knowledge systems and provide examples of each.

Question 30

Explain development of vision in the newborn.