Child Development and Perception: A Comprehensive Summary
Chapter 4: Child Development
Newborn (0-5 Months)
Communicates primarily through crying and facial expressions.
5-7 Months
Begins babbling and intentional vocalizations using consonants and vowels, but without meaning.
12-18 Months
Starts using words, often in the form of holophrases (single words conveying a whole idea).
18-24 Months
Develops telegraphic speech, combining words in a logical syntax, but not forming complete sentences.
18+ Months
Shows a tendency to overgeneralize grammar rules, applying them where exceptions should be used.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Schemas: Ways of thinking about how the world works.
Assimilation: Placing new experiences into existing schemas.
Accommodation: Altering existing schemas to fit new information.
- Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2 years): Begins to mentally represent information acquired through the senses and starts to act intentionally.
- Preoperational Stage (2-7 years): Learns to use language and exhibits egocentric thinking.
- Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years): Develops logical thinking and understands conservation of number, volume, mass, and weight.
- Formal Operational Stage (12+ years): Can think logically about abstract concepts, test hypotheses systematically, and becomes concerned with future and ideological issues.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning
- Preconventional Level: Focuses on personal gain and loss.
- Conventional Level: Seeks others’ approval or disapproval.
- Postconventional Level: Emphasizes social justice and universal ethical principles.
Harlow’s Attachment Experiment
Demonstrated the importance of contact comfort in attachment formation with monkeys. Attachment styles include secure, avoidant, and ambivalent, influenced by maternal reactions and temperament.
Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development
(Details not provided)
Dementia
Severe impairment in intellectual capacity due to brain damage.
Chapter 5: Sensation and Perception
Basic Concepts
Sensation: Detection of external physical stimuli.
Perception: Brain’s processing and interpretation of sensory signals, resulting in an internal representation of the stimulus.
Transduction: Conversion of physical stimuli into neural signals by sensory receptors.
Absolute Threshold: Minimum intensity of a stimulus that can be detected.
Difference Threshold: Minimum difference between two stimuli that can be detected 50% of the time (Just Noticeable Difference – JND).
Weber’s Law: The ability to perceive a difference is relative to the constant background intensity (k = ΔS/S).
Signal Detection Theory: Considers both the presence of a stimulus and the individual’s response bias.
Sensory Adaptation: Decrease in sensitivity to a constant level of stimulation.
Bottom-Up Processing: Perception based on analysis of sensory input.
Top-Down Processing: Perception influenced by prior experiences and expectations.
Vision
Light enters the eye through the cornea, passes through the pupil and lens, and is focused on the retina. Rods and cones in the retina transduce light into neural signals, which are then transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve.
Fovea: Area of the retina with the highest concentration of cones.
Rods: Responsible for dim light vision and peripheral vision.
Cones: Responsible for color vision and visual acuity.
Wavelength and Amplitude: Short wavelengths correspond to blue light and high-pitched sounds, while greater amplitude corresponds to brighter colors and louder sounds.
Theories of Color Vision
Trichromatic Theory: Color vision is based on three types of cones: S (blue), M (green), and L (red).
Opponent-Process Theory: Color vision is based on opposing pairs of colors: blue-yellow, red-green, and black-white.
Perceptual Organization
Figure and Ground: Distinguishing objects from their background.
Grouping Principles: Proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and illusory contours.
Depth Perception
Binocular Depth Perception: Uses retinal disparity (slightly different views from each eye) to perceive depth.
Monocular Depth Cues: Linear perspective, interposition, and other cues that can be perceived with one eye.
Hearing
Sound waves travel through the auditory canal, vibrate the eardrum, and are amplified by the ossicles. The vibrations are then transmitted to the cochlea, where hair cells transduce them into neural signals.
Temporal Coding: Encodes low-pitched sounds based on the timing of hair cell stimulation.
Place Coding: Encodes high-pitched sounds based on the location of hair cell stimulation on the basilar membrane.
Localization: Determining the source of a sound based on time and intensity differences between the ears.
Smell
Odorants stimulate olfactory receptors in the olfactory epithelium, which transduce the chemical signals into neural signals.
Touch and Pain
Fast Fibers: Transmit sharp, immediate pain signals.
Slow Fibers: Transmit dull, steady pain signals.
Gate Control Theory of Pain: Pain perception is modulated by a neural gate in the spinal cord.
Kinesthetic Sense
Provides information about body position and movement.
Vestibular Sense
Provides information about balance and spatial orientation.