Using neurological and anatomical data though doesn’t create a clear picture in assessing the constraints involved, as this only inform us of the difficulty entailed but not the effect. Rather scientists have been examining behaviour of infants how they react to visual experiences. This enables a deeper understanding of restrictions imposed as we can actually observe using different methods what they can actually do, in contrast to other tests that just give us a theoretical picture. By examining behaviour much more is being examined too, like the systems that control motor activity such as eye movements. In addition, since our visual world is rarely stationary, there are many more details required to see a complete moving picture, such as successive fixations which enables us to examine a whole picture (Psychological Development and Early Childhood p.100). Therefore using different methods we can attempt to analyse the infant’s limits.
The looking patterns of infants young and old are characterized by unmistakable tendencies to look longer at some stimuli as opposed to others. In the late 1950`s Frantz pointed out that infants are able to inspect their world visually and therefore began observing the different stimuli’s that attracted infants. Several preferences have been found to be more attractive by infants. They prefer to examine simple stimuli rather than complex geometric shapes. Curved features also attract them over straight or angular ones. They respond to moving objects over stationary ones, and three dimensional objects instead of photographs of the same object. Seemingly, infants prefer simplicity over concentrated and complicated stimuli. Several investigators have found that infants have an inborn preference for what is familiar, for instance, they prefer their mothers face over a strangers face very soon after birth.
Different studies have been taken in order to determine whether infants have visual preferences. Most famous is Frantz who found a simple and reliable technique to test infants. Known as the visual preference paradigm it works by someone presenting two stimuli to the child one containing fine detail and one which is a uniform grey and recording the total amount of times the baby spends looking. Commonly referred to as `forced- choice preferential looking` ,its noted advantage is that the observers judgement is not influenced as its not known which stimuli is being presented (Psychological Development and Early Childhood p.102) . Through this method one can infer that apart from the fact that the child can discriminate between two stimuli’s, it has preferences also. This procedure isn’t limited to testing visual acuity, scientists have been using it to examine topics ranging from pattern perception preferences for complexity, and even face perception.
In a similar vein when no initial preference is shown we can present the infants with a new exemplar of the familiar category that they haven’t seen before as well as a new exemplar from a contrasting category. If the infant has formed a representation of the known category then it should prefer to look at the example from the new group, even though both items presented at test are novel stimuli. Preferential observation to look at the novel shape would suggest that the baby has generalized cognitive representation of the familiar shape, to which they appear to be comparing all subsequently presented stimuli.
Possessing capability to classify patterns as related is a vital cognitive process. This ability to organize incoming information into categories is essential for cognitive activity because without it every object or event that occurred would be processed as if it were exclusive. This would produce an overwhelming amount of information and create large confusion.
A case study was taken with 18 babies investigating their sensitivity to various patterns. Six patterns were shown; a schematic face, black and white concentric circles, a piece of newsprint and coloured discs. The results were clear there was twice as much attention to patterns as to plainly coloured surfaces. For instance infants under 48 hours had a mean percentage of 29.5 of fixation on the schematic face, compared to 12.3 of a coloured disc which had the highest percentage from the colours. By tabulating the longest fixated target for each newborn infant, schematic faces came out the highest too. Two infants under 24 hours were also tested with one infant preferring face pattern 7 out of the 8 exposures. (Psychological Development And Early Childhood p.104) While it’s difficult to reject these statistics that seem to show preference of pattern over colour, nevertheless we don’t see an inherent recognition of faces as it could be that similar patterns would warrant even greater interest. What we do see though is that patterns with similarities to social objects have stimulating value for a baby.
The human face contains a multifaceted stimulus, possessing several stimulus characteristics, such as movement, contrast, three-dimensionality, guaranteeing an interest to the infant. Apart from finding that newborns have a familiarity preference for mothers and that they attempt to track face-like patterns, like we proved above through the experiment with the schematic faces patterns, they seem to have preferences for attractive faces even “newborns who averaged less than three days from birth” and even found to imitate facial gestures such as mouth opening and tongue protrusion like one of Piaget`s students pointed out “that if she stuck out her tongue the baby would respond by sticking its tongue out too”. An idea suggested why the baby imitates is as a form of social interaction and as a way of learning about social interaction. (Psychological Development and Early Childhood p. 105, 109).
Another study undertaken was an experiment on size constancy. Infants (2 days old) were shown a cube at different distances from the eye, and then as a novelty preference a different sized cube was shown as well, but at a different distance, in order to make it appear as the same size as the other cube. It was found that infants preferred the novel cube. This demonstrated that infant’s perceive objects as being the same size despite changes to the distance. Being able to discriminate in sizes is a prerequisite for many other types of perceptual organisation and also helps infants process stimuli they encounter; without it the visual world would be extremely confusing for them.
In some methods used, infants play a more active role such as crawling, walking, or reaching. This was used to test a child`s depth perception, to perceive the world in three dimension and the distance of an object his visual ability. Constructed by Gibson and Walks, a visual cliff was enacted where the child is made to crawl over a large area that seems to have a large drop in the middle. It was found that out of 27 children only three ignored the drop whereas the rest feared to continue. (Psychological Development and Early Childhood p.108). This an intrinsic survival tool required for a child to identify as it helps the child recognize edges and drops and determines which of two objects is closer. Survival would be impossible if the infant could not perceive depth; it would run into things and be unable to judge how far away a predator was. Even though we do see that has a child has a depth perception but the results don’t prove that it’s an innate skill, as infants tested were between six months to a year (as beforehand they couldn’t crawl) and by then they had already learned many skills.
Explanation of the development of preferences might not augment our general understanding of the development of an infants vision, for instance it doesn’t actually tell us whether a three month old child will be able to see more. However the evidence presented here does suggest that the infant enters the world with some sort of inbuilt knowledge of our world and equipped with certain skills and maybe even images of the human face that enables the infant to learn from its surroundings. Additionally, an infant seems to show preferences of naturalistic situations for instance three dimensions, perhaps to facilitate a coherent idea in how to act.(Psychological Development And Early Childhood p.109).
References: Psychological Development and Early Childhood by John Oates, Clare Wood and Andrew Grayson
PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND EARLY CHILDHOOD Reading A: Pattern vision in newborn infants Robert L. Fantz
Word Count: 1910
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