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Brain and neural development from infancy through toddlerhood scholar
Brain and neural development from infancy through toddlerhood scholar
Brain and neural development from infancy through toddlerhood scholar
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Empirical research has investigated an infants’ capability of using an adult’s eye gaze to direct their own eye gaze onto an external stimulus (Reid & Striano, 2005). Hoehl, Reid, Mooney, and Striano (2008) wanted to further expand on this research and investigate this at a neural level. It is necessary that conclusions drawn from this particular study are applicable to all infants. Therefore, it is important that this research is reliable and valid and that any limitations of this research can be improved upon to help expand the field further.
Research in this field found preferential differences in an adult when their eye gaze is directed towards an object, as opposed to faces with eye gaze averted from an object, in neonates (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). Reid and Striano (2005) examined 4-month-old infants looking at adult faces with their eye gaze directed towards an object and averted away from an object. It was found that infants looked substantially shorter at the object that was cued by the eye gaze. They concluded that the cued object was familiar compared with the uncued object which was seen as novel and therefore attracted more attention. Reid, Striano, Kaufman, and Johnson (2004) expanded upon previous research and investigated neural activity using event related potentials to measure an infants’ reaction to direct and averted eye gaze. A positive slow wave measure was adopted and it was found that the amplitude was larger for the averted eye gaze condition compared against the direct eye gaze condition. This increase indicated that the averted eye gaze was seen as novel compared to the direct eye gaze, substantiating what had been found in previous research.
Hoehl, Reid, Mooney, and Striano (2008) re...
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...search has provided a deeper understanding into the field of infant development. This study looked to see whether infants differentially process an adults’ eye gaze depending on directed or averted eye gaze from an object located in the infants’ periphery view. It was found that there are differences in neural processing between direct and averted eye gaze in terms of encoding and attention. However, improvements could be made to the study such as making changes to the face in order to see whether the perception of the face changes processing, as well as carrying out a memory test to verify the assumption made about encoding differences. Future research has focused on infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder in relation to the processing of eye gaze to determine whether autism can be identified early on in infancy (Hoehl, Reid, Parise, Handl, Palumbo, & Striano, 2009).
Though the term “inattentional blindness” would not be conceived until 1998, the concept itself is not new. As cited by Simons and Chabris, Hungarian neurologist and psychiatrist Rezso Balint wrote in 1907 “It is a well-known phenomenon that we do not notice anything happening in our surroundings while being absorbed in the inspection of something…” (1999). Using the term “selective looking,” Ulric Neisser, an American psychologist, demonstrated this idea in 1979. In his study, he instructed subjects to count the number of times a group of participants threw a basketball to each other. While the subjects were focused on this attention demanding task, a woman with an umbrella walked in the middle of the participants. At th...
A common area of perception that many may not think about is the ability to recognize faces. Facial recognition, however, is not consistent from infancy to adulthood but develops throughout an individual’s life. During infancy, the ability to see detail is quite poor compared to the average adult (Goldstein & Brockmole, 2017). When objects are within close distances, studies have shown that infants are able to perceive and detect a few features of the object; this idea can then be related to facial recognition in infants (Goldstein & Brockmole, 2017). The details that infants are able to perceive are associated with contrast in light, especially the difference between dark and light areas. Though this does
The researchers’ hypothesis is premised on a theory first proposed by Charles Darwin called the “facial feedback hypothesis” (Finzi et. al., 2014). Darwin suggested that the feedback our brains receive from the contraction of our facial muscles plays a casual role in cont...
In this assignment I am going to describe a child observation that I have done in a nursery for twenty minutes in a play setting. I will explain the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic observation through the key developmental milestones based in Mary Sheridan (2005) check-list and provide a theoretical explanation to support the naturalistic observation.
Jonsson, B., & von Hofsten, C. (2003). Infants’ ability to track and reach for temporary occluded objects. Developmental Science, 6(1), 86-99.
The observation took place at the Child-Development Center classroom D at Yuba College. When I arrived the children were outside playing in the grass and play-sets available. We made a few trips to the bathroom, and towards the end of my observation we moved into the classroom. It was a cool day so the kids did not mind being outside, so most of the observation occurred outside the
For humans, our ability to understand other people’s actions, and the intentions behind those actions, are enabled by our mirror neuron system (Cattaneo & Rizzolatti, 2009). Most crucial throughout infancy and toddler years, the mirror neuron system (MNS) allows for simple tasks such as imitation, which later becomes vital to the development of our social cognitive skills (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006). The MNS is located in the F5 sector of our ventral premotor cortex and is known to discharge upon sensation of movement, however not firing to simple body displacements. Cattaneo and Rizzolatti explain there are two sets of mirror neurons, parietofrontal mirror neurons and premotor mirror neurons (2009). The entire system works together, first with the parietofrontal mirror neurons learning of the action that is taking place, followed by the premotor neurons sending a signal when they understand the reason behind that particular action (Cattaneo & Rizzolatti, 2009). The MNS system is not only activated during observation, but also while listening to sounds and emotion (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Dapretto el al., 2005...
Visual awareness in humans can affect social interaction and knowledge formation. It has always been thought that adults possess better vision than children. In the past it was thought that babies were born without vision and gained it gradually. Most of these perceptions have so far been nullified by modern research. Although the above is untrue, there are still several differences between infants’ and adults’ vision. The eye of the infant is less than half the size of an adult’s. Considering that visual ability is related to eye size, in infan...
Early childhood is considered the most important developmental phase throughout the lifespan. In early childhood, the physical, cognitive, language and psychosocial domains of development are equally important (WHO). For these reasons, the observer would analyze normal growth and development of early childhood using various development theories in this observation paper. For observing the subject’s behaviors and social interaction with others, the observer went to one of Jewish friends’ house to have dinner in Passover holiday, is one of the best known Jewish holidays for seven-days. The house has two floors and grass garden. Almost 30 people attended at the celebration. Most people were family and friends. There were roughly 13 children stayed in the house with their parents. Most of children were 5 to 10-year-olds. For exploring growth and development in early childhood, the observer chose one of girl, is a six-years-olds, whose name is IL. The observer monitored her behavior for 5 hours before and after dinner, was able estimate IL’s age, height, weight, physical appearance, actions, verbalizations, emotions, type of play/activity and interaction with others. First of all, her physical appearances were observed that her height and weight seemed like 120-125cm and 20 kg. She looked like taller and skinner compared to other peers in that house. She did not have two upper front teeth. The observer assumed her level of physical development using by the growth chart. Following the curve in the chart, IL’s rate of growth is normal, and also her height and weight are in balance. Also, gross motor skills were observed during that time. In addition, when she was showing her magic to peers, she pretended as magician. During this time, t...
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Lindsay S. Oberman. "Broken Mirrors: A Theory of Autism." Scientific American Journal. (2006): 62-69. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.
Zwaigenbaum, L., Bryson, S., Rogers, T., Roberts, W., Brian, J., & Szatmari, P. (2005). Behavioral manifestations of autism in the first year of life. International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, 23(2), 143-152.
Sridhar, D., & Bedell, H. E. (2011). Relative contributions of the two eyes to perceived
Observation is very important in young children because that is how you get to know a child better. While observing how a child interacts with their peers, adults, and how they behave in different settings, you are getting to know the child without speaking to them.
Once people talk to each other, they usually have eyes contact. From the eye contacts, it tell us we are sharing the information as a feedback. For example, if were talking to the person without sharing the eye contact with him/her, it will consider as a bad behavior. The person that I did not share my eye contact is my teacher. Instead of talking to her directly, I was looking at the table, and she felt like I am ignoring her. It was bad behave from me.
In the process of human infants’ development, infants start to learn how to communicate with the others at the surprising early age, for example: Newborns can follow objects to make saccades to peripheral targets (Farroni et al., 2004);Infants’ responding eye gaze behaviour increase constantly since two months old (Scaife & Bruner, 1975); Cooper and Aslin pointed out that this preference showed up as early as the infants were one month old in 1990. Infants not only can respond to eye contact, vocal cues also are used for gaining more reference information during a communication, particularly when the speech is conducted forward to the infants. It had been reported in many studies that infants show more preference to infant-directed communication