Perceptual Development

Mohammad Abdul Shabazz-Marsh
Fayetteville State University

Instructor: Chris Ike Ph.D.
November 21, 2012

ABSTRACT
The current study examined the individual and joint effects of the Developing Child personality traits and acculturation on coping styles. Using the proposed framework of (Dammeijer, Schlundt, Chenault, Manni, & Anteunis, (2002), the relations among these variables were evaluated at the Developing level to exploit previously unexplored within perceptual skills. This approach emphasizes the unique expression of Nativism and Empiricism specific personality in a Perceptual Development stage in a single culture.

Perceptual Developing is not just a one area of a person’s life its throughout their life from a child throughout adulthood, we have to stress the point of Development. “Perception refers to the process of taking in, organizing, and interpreting sensory information. Perception is multimodal, with multiple sensory inputs contributing to motor responses (Bertenthal 1996)”. An infant is revolving his head in reaction to the illustration and acoustic cues of the vision of a face and the reverberation of a voice exemplify this type of perception. Intersensory redundancy, “the fact that the senses provide overlapping information is a cornerstone of perceptual development” (Bahrick, Lickliter, and Flom 2004)”.
Nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard-wired into the brain at birth. For example, one might argue that some moral intuitions are innate or those color preferences are innate. A less established argument is that nature supplies the human mind with specialized learning devices. Nativism is sometimes perceived as being too vague to be falsifiable, as there is no fixed definition of when ability is supposed to be judged "innate."
“Motor development refers to changes in children’s ability to control their body’s movements, from infants’ first spontaneous waving and kicking movements to the adaptive control of reaching, locomotion, and complex sport skills” (Adolph, Weise, and Marin 2003, 134). The term “motor behavior” describes all movements of the body, including movements of the eyes (as in the gaze), and the infant is developing control of the head. Gross motor actions include the movement of large limbs or the whole body, as in walking. Fine motor behaviors include the use of fingers to grasp and manipulate objects.

Empiricism: The philosophical school of thought that real knowledge comes from the senses. This formed the basis for the foundation of modern science - the reliance on empirical evidence, or evidence that is observable. You have probably heard the expression, "empirical data" before...it is referring to any data that are observable through the senses.
As infants develop increasing motor competence, they use perceptual information to inform their choices about which motor actions to take (Adolph and Joh 2007). For example, they may adjust their crawling or walking in response to the rigidity, slipperiness, or slant of surfaces (Adolph 1997). Motor movements, including movements of the eyes, arms, legs, and hands, provide most of the perceptual information infants receive (Adolph and Berger 2006).
Some researchers argue that the premises of linguistic nativism were motivated by outdated considerations and need reconsidering. For example, nativism was at least partially motivated by the perception that statistical inferences made from experience were insufficient to account for the complex languages humans develop.
Infants’ perceptual skills are at work during every waking moment. For example, those skills can be observed when an infant gazes into a caregiver’s eyes or distinguishes between familiar and unfamiliar people. Infants use perception to distinguish features of the environment, such as height, depth, and color. “The human infant is recognized today as ‘perceptually competent’; determining just how the senses function in infancy helps to specify the perceptual world of babies” (Bornstein 2005, 284). The ability to perceive commonalities and differences between objects is related to the cognitive domain foundation of classification. Infants explore

objects differently depending upon object features such as weight, texture, sound, or rigidity (Palmer 1989). Parents and professionals may have observed young children exploring a slope, such as a slide, by touching it with their hands or feet before they decide whether to slide down it or not. Research by Adolph, Eppler, and Gibson (1993) suggests that learning plays a part in young children’s decision-making in physically risky situations, such as navigating slopes, and that exploratory behavior may be a means to this learning. Perception is also strongly related to the social-emotional domain, such as when young children perceive the differences between various facial expressions and come to understand what they may mean.
Fine Motor Development through touching, grasping, and manual manipulation, infants experience a sense of agency and learn about the features of people, objects, and the environment. Fine motor development is related to the ability to draw, write, and participate in routines such as eating and dressing.
Common early childhood learning materials, such as pegboards, stacking rings, stringing beads, and puzzles, offer opportunities for infants to practice their fine motor skills.
Fine motor movements of the hands are coordinated with perceptual information provided through movements of the eyes, as when seven- to nine-month-old infants use visual information to orient their hands as they reach for an object (McCarty and others 2001).
Young children’s bodies undergo remarkable changes in the early childhood years. In describing this development, Adolph and Avolio (2000, 1148) state, “Newborns are extremely top-heavy with large heads and torsos and short, weak legs. As infants grow, their body fat and muscle mass are redistributed. In contrast to newborns, toddlers’ bodies have a more cylindrical

shape, and they have a larger ratio of muscle mass to body fat, especially in the legs.” These changes in weight, size, percentage of body fat, and muscle strength provide perceptual/motor challenges to infants as they practice a variety of actions (Adolph and Berger 2006). This dramatic physical development occurs within the broad context of overall development.
Inconlcusion as infants master each challenge, their perceptual and motor, behavior reflects their ever-present interpersonal orientation and social development and environmental life.

References
Adolph, K. E. 1997. “Learning in the Development of Infant Locomotion,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 62, No. 3, Serial No. 251.
Adolph, K. E. 2008. “Motor/Physical Development: Locomotion,” in Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development. Edited by M. M. Haith and J. B. Benson. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Adolph, K. E., and A. M. Avolio. 2000. “Walking Infants Adapt Locomotion to Changing Body Dimensions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1148–66.
Adolph, K. E., and S. E. Berger. 2005. “Physical and Motor Development,” in Developmental Science: An Advanced Textbook (Fifth edition). Edited by M. H. Bornstein and M. E. Lamb. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Adolph, K. E., and S. E. Berger. 2006. “Motor Development,” in Handbook of Child Psychology: Volume 2: Cognition, Perception, and Language (Sixth edition). Series Editors: W. Damon and R. Lerner. Volume Editors: D. Kuhn and others. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Adolph, K. E.; M. A. Eppler; and E. J. Gibson. 1993. “Crawling Versus Walking Infants’ Perception of Affordances for Locomotion over Sloping Surfaces,” Child Development, Vol. 64, No. 4, 1158–74.
Adolph, K. E., and A. S. Joh. 2007. “Motor Development: How Infants Get Into the Act,” in Introduction to Infant Development (Second edition). Edited by A. Slater and M. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press