reading

• Development begins from the moment of conception
• Brain begins to develop very early in the embryonic period and continues to develop through infancy
• Genetic and environmental factors interact to affect development in the prenatal period (continues after birth)
• Experiences can turn genes on or off and vice versa, genes can limit or influence the impact of experiences
• Infants are capable of cognition and the analysis of information beyond the stage of mere sensory-perceptual encoding
• Argument against Piaget’s theory of infants’ perception of objects = children born without hands or legs following the thalidomide tragedy:

  • Babies showed normal intellectual development despite no opportunity for physical interaction with objects (DeCarie, 1969)
  • Couldn’t hold and look at things simultaneously, which is essential in Piaget’s theory (touch tutors vision)
• Infants have a precocious understanding of essential object properties such as solidity:

  • Bower (1971) study showed babies perceived a 'virtual object' as solid by projecting a polarised light shadow of a stationary cube
  • Change in heart rate indicated surprise when their hands swiped through it
  • Three-month-old babies were "surprised" when an object disappeared instantaneously
  • Meltzoff and Borton (1979) found that young babies can extract basic info about objects they touched but not seen
• • Baillargeon (1999) used the habituation method to show infants perceive the continued existence of hidden objects and understand physical interactions between objects
• Visual preferences in infancy demonstrated by Fantz (1961), showing a preference for patterned objects

  • Baillargeon (1991) found babies perceive objects' continued existence and physical size when occluded
  • Hespos & Baillargeon (2001) showed infants' surprise when a tall object disappeared behind a short container
  • Smith (1999) suggests a dynamic, epigenetic approach to development resolves nativist-empiricist conflict
  • Spelke (1999) suggests basic knowledge structures may be present in perceptual systems
• Infants struggle with coordinating actions and memory, particularly in tasks like retrieving hidden objects

  • Stage IV error involves persistently searching for an object in its initial hiding place despite it being moved elsewhere
  • Diamond (1988) found a delay of about three seconds between hiding and retrieval is necessary for infants at eight months to make this error
  • Wellman, Cross, and Bartsch (1986) identified factors influencing error likelihood
• Reaching and grasping:

  • Piaget (1945/1962) believed hand movement and vision are independent, with a hand regard period at 3 months old
  • White, Castle, and Held (1964) supported the acceleration of reaching through brightly colored mittens
  • Bower (1982) argued the link between visual and hand movement isn't established by visual feedback
  • Fraiberg (1974) observed reaching in blind babies substituting audition for vision
  • Bruner (1983) noted infants struggle to establish correct serial order between acts for reaching and grasping
• • Contemporary research suggests eye-hand coordination is innate
  • Jeannerod (1984) described the innate transportation component of reaching coordinated with a manipulation component guided by the visual properties of the object
• Hierarchical integration involves the use of memory to deal with three objects at a time, storing the third object elsewhere instead of dropping it