The most primitive form of learning. This is the process whereby attention to a stimulus decreases with continued exposure. Newborns look longer at a new stimulus compared to a familiar stimulus.

So it is decreasing attention to a familiar stimulus. 

When newborns are shown a new picture they look at it and scan it. However, over time they look away. When this picture is presented side by side with a new one, newborns look longer at the new picture. Habituation, therefore, lets the infant tell us that a stimulus is familiar or old.

* becoming accustomed to a sound, a sight, an object, or some other kind of stimulus

* occurs when we learn not to respond to repeated occurrences of a stimulus

A term for the interconnectedness of our perceptual systems.  It is the result of coordination and communication among the sensory perceptual systems. When we look at a scene, we also experience sounds and smells. 

An experiment has shown that neonates will look longer at a nipple which has the shape of a nipple he or she previously sucked on but did not see

The minimum intensity of sensory stimulation an observer can perceive. Or, the minimal intensity of a stimulus an observer can detect.

- the smallest detectable level of a stimulus

- the lowest intensity at which a stimulus can be detected 50% of the time

- can be applied to all seses (taste, smell, sight, etc.)

Example:  the absolute threshold for smell could be "one drop of perfume in a 10x10 bedroom"

The newborn's absolute threshold for vision and hearing is higher than a normal adult's, but rapidly decreases. Young infants do not hear very soft whispers that adults with normal hearing can.

The ability to see fine gratings or details in a visual stimulus. 

Perfect acuity is quantified as 20/20.

Newborn visual acuity ranges from about 20/400 to 20/800. What this means is a newborn can see something as clearly at 20 feet as a person with normal vision could see clearly at 600-800 feet. 

Newborns can see objects clearly that are about nine inches away. The poor acuity in newborns is because the muscles that control the lens, the part of the eye that has to reflect light onto the retina, are weak. Visual acuity improves rapidly over the first four months of life. 

At birth, neonates can see although their visual acuity is poor. 

Used to measure depth perception in infants and toddlers.

Eleanor Gibson’s classic experiment done to test whether depth perception is learned or innate. She tested seven month olds and found the majority would not crawl across the visual cliff

* device used in research to determine a child's level of motor skill advancement and depth perception (which increases greatly between the ages of 3 and 5)

* involves presenting the child with what looks like a cliff, although their hands tell them that it is a solid glass surface

- children who have developed depth perception will be reluctant to cross the "cliff," even though their hands tell them it is safe to do so

* between 6-8 months of age an infants' ability to tell the distance of various objects and to experience the world three-dimensionally undergoes a huge development.

A term used to describe the preferences for looking that appear in neonates

Young infants will scan the borders and edges of objects in a visual stimulus while older infants will scan inside the edges. The difference may be due to the fact that young infants are still learning to pick out objects in a scene which older infants can accomplish very quickly. the older infant has more time to scan inside the contours of an object for details.

The term for loss of visual acuity for near objects that is associated with aging. The adult sees more glare, has less sensitivity under dim lighting conditions, and has difficulty with near vision.

It is present in most people after the mid- to late 40s. It is corrected with lenses that help focus images from near objects onto the retina. 

- the act of hearing

- our perception of the frequency and wavelength of sound

- involves both the mind and sense organs

* theory asserting that:

- knowledge or the content of the mind is derived primarily from sensory experience

- we are born into this world with empty minds, like bland slates

- our tendencies and beliefs are not preprogrammed

- we learn everything from our environment after we are born

* a sheet of neural tissue on the outer side of the cerebrum of the brain

* responsible for learning, thinking, reading, and problem solving

* the least developed part of the central nervous system at birth

* recognition of an object as familiar when perceived with a sense other than that previously exposed to the object

* relies on the senses to help a person to determine an object in a new way

- E.g. using both taste and smell to recognize something

* the basis for most human learning

* is frequently practiced in infancy with simple actions involving objects

* when infants "look" at something, they actually bounce from feature to feature rather than staring

* recent research indicates that infants take in many interesting aspects of what they perceive at a given moment (e.g. several features of a human face)

* newborns have poor color vision because the cones in the retina are not highly developed

* the greatest gain in visual acuity occurs from birth until 6 months of age

* travels in the form of waves of energy, and differences in intensity of light correspond to differences in the wave amplitude of light

* first enters the eye through the cornea and then travels through the pupil, which is an opening in the iris 

- brightness is the psychological experience of intensity of light

* a psychological characteristic which is measured by people, not instruments

- the decibel scale of sound intensity has been constructed to reflect loudness as perceived by humans

* takes place between the ages of 3 1/2 and 7 years

* children perceive differently than adults

- through utilizing the same sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, children possess different approaches to processing information

* a child's ability to recognize that physical objects they can't see do still exist, and wait for their reappearance.

- children who haven't developed object permanence forget about a ball as soon as it leaves their sight, because it no longer exists for them.

* the study of the relationships between the physical attributes of stimuli and the psychological experiences that they produce

* the oldest subfield in psychology

* attempts two things:

1. to assess the sensitivity of senses

2. provide a means relating the physical outside world to that of the inner psychological world

* saturation is a psychological characteristic of light which is determined by the physical purity of the light source

* pure, monochromatic lights are the most highly saturated

- their hue is rich and obvious

- light waves consist of all one length or hue

- an example of monochromatic color would be bright red without any shades or other colors present

* variations in wavelength results in lower saturation, where light begins to appear pale and washed out

* a substage of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

* occurs when an infant's behavior expands from being centered his or her own body to interacting with the surrounding environment

- e.g. after an infant shakes a rattle and it jingles, the infant continues to shake the rattle

When a particular organism is most sensitive to the effects of a stimuli  - whildren, if misguided, may develop negative behaviors during a sensitive period

* e.g. research reveals that between the ages of 8-10 is the most sensitive time for children to be exposed to violence

* children exposed to violence during this sensitive period tend to be more violent later in life.

* first stage in Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

* extends from birth to the acquisition of language

* includes casualty (children begin to learn that some events have knowable causes and some behaviors cause predictable reactions).

- children discover by sensing and by doing

- object permanence develops by the end of the stage

* is sometimes utilized by developmental psychology researchers int heir efforts to determine the impact of environment on human development

* involves the deliverate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses 

- e.g. the removal of light, sound, or people contact (isolation)

* may lead to hallucinations, physical and mental illnesses, stunted emotional and mental growth, and many other ailments in both children and adults

* holds large amounts of information registered at the senses for very brief periods of time (just a couple of seconds)

* sensory information is:

- received immediately

- stored just for an instant

- mostly discarded

- the brain decides what to process further (info the brain chooses to process is sent on to short-term memory).

* stimulus detection involves a decision-making process that separates signals from background noise

- people need to judge whether or not a stimulus has been presented

- personal nervous activity and shifting background noises are considered when making the judgement

* associated with recall of conditioned muscular or glandular responses

* acquired slowly with conditioning, practice, or regular attempts

* needed for object manipulation and learned physical activity

- e.g. a child may need to practice repeatedly to remember how to fit shapes into a shape box

* the tendency for objects to look the same despite fluctuations in sensory input

* comes in three flavors:

- color constancy

- size constancy

- shape constancy

perceptual constancy or stability

of shape, size, brightness and color of objects in our visual fields.

We are able to recognize the same objects at a variety of angles, at various distances, and even under different colored lightning because of perceptal constancies. 

The four perceptual constancies are:

Size constancy - objects we are familiar with seem to appear the same size despite changes in the distance between us and the objects.

Ex. Newborns have been shown to have size constancy. 

Shape Constancy - Objects appear to be the same shape despite changes in their orientation toward the viewer.

Brightness or Lightness Constancy - Objects appear to stay the same brightness despite changes in the anount of light falling on them.

Color Constancy - The hue of an object appears to stay the same despite changes in backgrown lighting.

Ex. Very young infants see color and have a mature ability to perceive color by two to three months of age.

Newborns and infants also have visual preferences. They prefer to look at faces and other visual stimuli that have contour, contrast, complexity, and movement. Some two-day-old infants are even capable of discriminating their mother's face from a stranger's face. By three months of age almost all infants can. Six-and seven-month-old infants will show surprise when shown a face with jumbled parts.