Why Study Infants

1
Why Study Infants

• Three reasons for studying infancy
• Philosophical questions
• The opportunity for humans to study themselves
• Parental investment
• Applied concerns
• The study of preterm infants
• Infants of drug-using mothers

2
The Study of Infants

• Past, present, and future
• The philosophical debate Nature versus Nurture
• The empiricist argument
• Knowledge comes through the senses
• John Locke and the tabula rasa
• William James and the infants world as a
  booming, buzzing confusion

3
The Study of Infants

• Past, present, and future
• The nativist argument
• Humans are endowed at birth with ideas or
  categories of knowledge
• Immanuel Kant and Rene Descartes

4
The Study of Infants

• Past, present, and future
• The main effects model
• Nativist View
• Nurturist View

Environment Environment Environment
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Constitution
Environment Environment Environment
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Constitution
5
The Study of Infants

• Past, present, and future
• The interactional model

Environment Environment Environment
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Constitution
6
The Study of Infants

• Past, present, and future
• The transactional model

Constitution C1 C2 C3 C4 . . . . .
. . Cn
Environment E1 E2 E3 E4 . . . . .
. . En
7
Methods of Research in Infancy

• Getting and keeping subjects
• How do you find subjects
• Sources of recruitment
• Representativeness and sampling
• Subject attrition
• Why dont researchers discuss sampling issues?
• Infant state
• The infant as a difficult experimental subject

8
Methods of Research in Infancy

• Response measures
• Visual fixation measures
• Sucking measures
• Physiological measures
• Age comparisons

9
Experimental techniques

• Spontaneous visual preference
• The procedure
• Limitations
• Habituation techniques
• Conditioning techniques
• Physiological measures
• Heart rate
• Brain activation measures

10
Aspects of perception

• Visual acuity

11
Aspects of perception

• Pattern preferences
• Facial configurations
• Complexity and symmetry