1. Perceptual Development

2. General Issues Why study perceptual development Erin – why is vision so quick to develop? How different from cognitive development? Issue of kind or of degree?

3. Methodological Issues Habitation technique Validity Reliability Directions of effects Novelty/familiarity vs. violation of expectation vs. prediction Tapping real world knowledge or on-line behavior Pictures vs. real objects Visual acuity Stefani, Dana, Seunghee, Dwight, Roxie

4. Methods Looking Paradigms Preferential Looking Present two stimuli simultaneously Measure the infant’s preference for one or the other stimulus Erin – torn between two

5. Methods Habituation: Familiarize to one stimulus and test with a different one Measure looking time to stimulus during habituation and test

6. Methods Habituation: Subtle difference between habituation and familiarization Gary habituation change stimulus dishabituation

7. Methods Kellman & Spelke (1983) Habituate Unitary Object Test Two Object Test

8. 1-month-old 2-month-old

9. Theoretical perspectives Empiricist? Nativist? Big battleground: Domain-specificity, core knowledge Evolutionary Gary, - prototypes Adaptive – Roxie, Erin: attractive mothers/babies See Langlois et al. 1995.

10. The What question What develops when? (Milestones) What capabilities are innate? (Elida) Important to distinguish between difference aspects of innateness face orienting, size and shape constancy, wholes and parts all shown at birth But, something can be innate even if not present at birth

11. The mechanism question What learning mechanisms are innate? Elida How does change occur?

12. Specific Issues How do individuals differ? Answer: A lot

13. More specific issues How do changes in the brain contribute to perceptual development ? (Dwight) Johnson – Conspec (subcortical) vs. Conlern (cortical)

14. Specific issues with papers Faces and Prototypes All with Caucasian females (Dana) Tautological? (Gary and Joan) Symmetry (Gary) Attractiveness all in the face (Dana) Speech Bilinguism (Miriam), CP in young of other species? (Miriam) Scott?

15. Continued What constrains perceptual development? 3 weeks: large squared checkerboard. 8 weeks: small squared checkerboard.

16. Bigger Issues Drawbacks / Challenges Hard to test many aspects of perceptual development Theory light