Canadian journal of psychology最新文献

Issues related to infant intersensory functioning are reviewed. The argument is offered that limitations of sensory inputs during early stages of development are necessary and provide structure and organization which determine behavioural characteristics at later stages. It is also suggested that infant organisms respond to the intensity of stimulation rather than organizational characteristics and that this is responsible for the form of sensory equivalence apparent during early development. A scheme for the investigation of sources of intersensory organization is presented which involves a prospective analysis of how consideration of the times of onset of sensory functions helps us to understand intra- and intersensory development. The advantages of this experimental approach are outlined.

The research of the authors and others on the role of structure in infant visual pattern perception is reviewed. Two new experiments are reported on preference for symmetry in infants. It is shown that infants reliably prefer patterns with multiple axes of bilateral symmetry relative to asymmetrical patterns. Also, the results demonstrate that vertically oriented single axis bilateral symmetry is more salient than horizontally oriented symmetry in infants as it is in adults. It is argued that sensitivity to various kinds of pattern structure reflects fundamental operations of the visual system.

Our review of infant face perception research had three purposes. First, we briefly attempted to describe a number of themes prevalent in the literature before 1979. Although the themes were broad and difficult to identify clearly, the underlying issues of the time seemed to fit three headings: (a) research that either did or did not support the existence of an innate preference for faces, (b) research that explored infants' general knowledge of faces, particularly their sensitivity to the invariant properties of faces, and (c) how infants acquire information about faces, as demonstrated through studies of facial scanning and feature discrimination. Our second goal was to summarize current trends. Here emphasis was placed on studies concerned with the face as a conveyer of socially-salient information, the neurological basis of face perception, and recent methodological innovations. Our final goal was to provide a sampling of issues and questions that seemed appropriate for investigation during the next decade.

Research during the past 10 years on the neonatal head-turn response to off-centred rattle sounds is reviewed, and various procedural and stimulus conditions that influence the probability of eliciting a correct response are identified. Also, the existence of a U-shaped developmental function is confirmed in a cross-sectional study of 104 infants between 3 days and 7 months of age. Neonates responded reliably, but slowly; the response decreased in frequency and magnitude between 1-3 months of age and increased again by 4-5 months of age. Speculation that this U-shaped function reflects a maturational shift in locus of control from subcortical to cortical structures was supported by the infants' responses to the presence effect (PE), which is thought to be cortically mediated. The PE was produced by playing the rattle sound through two loudspeakers with the output of one delayed by 5 ms, relative to the other; adults perceive only one sound at the leading loudspeaker. As predicted, neonates failed to respond to the PE, and the onset of correct PE responses corresponded closely to the upswing in the U-shaped function for SS responses. Other explanations for the temporary decline in orientation responses to sound are also discussed.

This research increases our understanding of infants' preference for "motherese" by demonstrating that this preference extends to infant-directed talk (IDT) delivered by males as well as females and that infants show both more attentional responsiveness and more affective responsiveness to IDT than to adult-directed talk (ADT). Infants aged 4-5.5 and 7.5-9 months were shown video recordings of male and female adults reciting identical scripts in either IDT or ADT. Attentional preference was measured by the amount of time the infants watched in each condition, and affective responsiveness was measured by two trained raters. Overall, it was found that infants of both ages show greater attentional and affective responsiveness to IDT than to ADT when spoken by either a male or a female. The younger group was also found to be more responsive, on both measures, than the older group. Of perhaps greater significance, it was shown that the behaviour infants displayed in response to IDT makes them more attractive to naive adult judges. This suggests that IDT may facilitate and maintain positive adult-infant interactions.

The purpose of this article is to review recent research on the young infant's use of voice-specific as well as voice-nonspecific auditory information during early language processing, to suggest a possible mechanism that biases the young infant towards this information, and to discuss potential implications of the early saliency of this information for later language development. Auditory preferences expressed by young infants are of interest because they demonstrate which properties of complex auditory events are effective in capturing the infant's attention. Moreover, the presence of such auditory preferences has led to speculations about their possible origins in both pre- and postnatal auditory experience. Research examining the role of early auditory experience in the formation of preferences is presented, along with a discussion of how the constrained nature of early auditory experience (particularly prenatal) may bias the young infant towards specific features of maternal as well as nonmaternal speech.

Ten years ago we proposed that the limitations on young infants' vision might be caused by an immature Y-pathway through the cortex, while their abilities might be mediated by an X-pathway to the cortex and by Y- and/or W-pathways to the superior colliculus and pretectum (Maurer & Lewis, 1979). Although that explanation was too simple overall, it fits well with what is known about asymmetrical optokinetic nystagmus, viz. the difficulty in eliciting OKN to patterns moving from the nasal field toward the temporal field. In this paper, we describe the development of symmetrical OKN, its alteration by early deprivation from cataract, and its physiological basis. We then suggest that, for primates, an explanation based on projections through the magnocellular versus parvocellular layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus may be more appropriate than one based on X-, Y-, and W-cells.

Jonides (1980, p. 111) suggested a model to account for shifts of spatial attention in visual search tasks with less than 100% cue validity. This two-stage probability matching model was subsequently tested by Jonides (1983). Reaction time distribution characteristics indeed provided some support for the model. In the present paper the relevant data presented in Jonides (1980, 1981, 1983) are further analysed. The results of this analysis strongly support the probability matching hypothesis. Probability matching is apparently a very important strategic characteristic of visual spatial attention that deserves much more study.

Subjects searched for a chromatic target among coloured background items. With low target-background chromatic similarity, response latencies remained uniformly short whether the target was present or not and whether the items were chromatically homogeneous or not. Latencies increased with increases in target-background similarity and were longest with heterogeneous backgrounds, with which the effects of trial also became manifest. We employed Treisman's model of visual search to account for these findings. In particular, we suggest that similarity increases forced a shift from a preattentive to an attentive search, the latter being importantly shaped by the background's level of chromatic variance.