Prenatal development

Question 1

John Locke (1689)
William James (1890)

Answer 1

An essay concerning human understanding.
The Principles of Psychology.
Infants are equipped with basic sensory mechanisms like vision and touch and a powerful statistical brain that is highly skilled in learning associations between sensory inputs.

Question 2

Pascalis et al (2002)

Answer 2

Investigated the development of specialization for faces. Predicted that our ability to identify different faces comes through experience of our own species. 6 month olds could discriminate between both different human and monkey faces. 9 month olds could only discriminate between different human faces which is the same as adults.

Question 3

Hepper et al (1997)

Answer 3

Auditory learning begins during pregnancy, likely in the 3rd trimester. Used 2D ultrasound to look at foetus while playing sound. Foetus orientates itself towards the sound.

Question 4

DeCasper and Fifer (1980)
Ockelford et al (1988)

Answer 4

New-borns can detect their mother or fathers voice over a strangers, they turn to the mother or fathers voice instead of a stranger.

Question 5

Mampe et al (2009)

Answer 5

New-borns crying melody is shaped by their native language. French goes up at the end of sentences and German goes down at the end. New-borns cries reflect this.

Question 6

Farroni et al (2005)
Farroni et al (2013)

Answer 6

New-borns are able to follow the gaze of others, track a face as it’s moving and are sensitive to the structure of the face within the first hour of life. Shown upright and inverted faces and face like structures. Prefer upright and faces that looked most like true human faces.
Activation when looking at a moving human but not when looking at a moving object. The brain gives a social response. Relationship between how long the baby had been born and how strong the response was, the longer they’d been born, the stronger the brain response. The same response was not shown for a non face object so it is face specific.

Question 7

Castiello et al (2010)

Answer 7

Foetuses reach for their twin by the 14th week of gestation. By the 18th week they spend more time contacting their twin that themself or the wall of the uterus.

Question 8

Banks et al (1975)

Answer 8

Children with abnormal binocular vision (can’t integrate information from both eyes). If they had had surgery to fix it before the age of 3 then they had better binocular vision than those who’d had it after the age of 3. Evidence of a sensitive period for this feature.

Question 9

Belin et al (2002)

Answer 9

Adult voice sensitive temporal regions. There is a distinct area of the brain that reacts to vocal sounds and non-verbal sounds. Superior temporal gyrus/sulcus and stronger in the right hemisphere.
Anterior STS - close to the temporal lobe
Central STS - Heschl’s gyrus, anterior ext
Posterior STS - to the planum temporale

Question 10

Blasi et al (2011)

Answer 10

Voice sensitive temporal regions at 3-6 months. Right superior temporal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus.

Question 11

Lloyd-Fox et al (2016)

Answer 11

Longitudinal specialisation across the first years of life. 18-24 month old watching a video, moving objects and moving human faces. Younger infants have a stronger non-social response. This changes to a stronger group level more social response with age.

Question 12

Murray et al (1999)

Answer 12

If primary caregivers are not attuned to their baby in the first few months of life the child is more likely to show behavioural disturbances both at home in the pre-school years and when entering school.