Visual discrimination in the human newborn.

Hershenson, Maurice

doi:10.1037/h0047340

Cited by 161 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Brennan, Ames, and Moore (1966), and Hershenson (1964) reported that newborns looked more at the largest stimulus shown: the stimuli were checkerboards or squares. However, Slater and Sykes (1977), whose stimuli were square-wave gratings, found that newborns preferred an intermediate range of spatial frequencies, rather than the largest stripes shown; Slater and Morison (1985) found that newborns looked at a square in preference to a larger trapezium.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Size constancy at birth: Newborn infants' responses to retinal and real size

Slater

Mattock

Brown

1990

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

213

128

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Two experiments are described whose aim was to investigate whether perception of size at birth is determined solely by proximal (retinal) stimulation, or whether newborn babies have the ability to perceive an object's real size across changes in distance. In Experiment 1, preferential looking between pairs of stimuli which varied in real size and viewing distance was found to be solely determined by retinal size, suggesting that changes to proximal stimulation can have profound effects on newborns' looking behavior. However, in Experiment 2 newborns were desensitized to changes in distance (and retinal size) during familiarization trials, and subsequently strongly preferred a different sized object to the familiar one, suggesting that the real size had been perceived as constant across the familiarization trials. These results confirm Granrud's (1987) findings that size constancy is present at birth. o 1990 Academic press. 1~.One organizing feature of perception which contributes to the perceived stability of the visual world is size constancy, that is, seeing an object as its real size despite changes that occur to the size of its retinal image as its viewing distance from an observer varies. It seems certain that size constancy is present at some point in infants' visual perception, but exactly when, and whether learning and experience are required for its development, are not fully known. Evidence for size constancy in early infancy was reported by Bower (1964Bower ( , 1966. Eight-week-old infants were conditioned to give head turns when a 30-cm cube was presented 1 m away; and they subsequently gave more conditioned responses to the same-size cube at a distance of 3 m, whose retinal image was onethird the size of the training stimulus, than to a 90-cm cube at 3 m, whose retinal image size was the same as the training stimulus. The data

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Size constancy at birth: Newborn infants' responses to retinal and real size

Slater

Mattock

Brown

1990

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

213

128

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“…Evidence of visual perception and discrimination is well documented in neonates (Fantz, 1961;Hershenson, 1964) and three-week-old infants (Brennan, Ames, & Moore, 1966). Werner and Siqueland (1978) found that infants from birth are able to discriminate among highly disparate targets on a recognition test.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neonatal visual information processing in cocaine-exposed and non-exposed infants

Singer

Arendt

Fagan

et al. 1999

Infant Behavior and Development

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This study investigated early neonatal visual preferences in 267 poly drug exposed neonates (131 cocaine-exposed and 136 non-cocaine exposed) whose drug exposure was documented through interviews and urine and meconium drug screens. Infants were given four visual recognition memory tasks comparing looking time to familiarized stimuli of lattices and rectangular shapes to novel stimuli of a schematic face and curved hourglass and bull's eye forms. Cocaine-exposed infants performed more poorly, after consideration of confounding factors, with a relationship of severity of cocaine exposure to lower novelty score found for both self-report and biologic measures of exposure, Findings support theories which link prenatal cocaine exposure to deficits in information processing entailing attentional and arousal organizational systems. Neonatal visual discrimination and attention tasks should be further explored as potentially sensitive behavioral indicators of teratologic effects. Keywordscocaine; neonatal visual attention; information processing; marijuana; alcohol poly drug exposure; visual recognition memory Over the past decade, prenatal cocaine exposure has emerged as a significant public health problem, affecting 5-15% of infants in urban areas of the United States. There is concern and controversy over cocaine's teratogenic potential since cocaine easily crosses the placental barrier during gestation (Woods, Plessinger, & Clark, 1987). This transmission of cocaine may directly and indirectly affect the fetus. Cocaine's stimulant effects on several neurotransmitter systems in adults have been noted (Wise, 1984), as cocaine prevents the reuptake of catecholamine presynaptically and has been found to affect primarily the cardiovascular, respiratory, and central nervous systems.There are a number of different mechanisms by which prenatal cocaine exposure could affect fetal development (Volpe, 1992). Alterations in catecholamine levels during gestation may affect the maturation of fetal neurotransmitter systems (Tennyson, Gershon, Budinkas, Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.• Lynn T. Singer, The Triangle Building, 11400 Euclid Avenue, Suite 250-A, Cleveland, Ohio 44106; Phone: (216) Fax: (216) & Rothman, 1983;Wang & Schnoll, 1986). Animal studies have found that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with increased catecholaminergic fiber densities in selected brain areas such as the posterior parietal cortex (Akbari & Azmitra, 1992;Posner & Peterson, 1988). Cocaine exposure may affect fetal brain development through its release and metabolism of monoamines, which are important in the definition of fetal brain structure and neuronal formation . In addition, the reduction of blood flow prenatally to cocaine-exposed fetuses may affect later infant information processing or problem solving .The early behavioral development of cocaine-exposed infants has been studied using measures of sensory-motor processing such as the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS), (Brazelton, 1984) neonatall...

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“…"Social" responses of the experimenter have also been used as reinforcers in infant conditioning studies (e.g., Brackbill, 1958). Experiments which demonstrate differential ocular orientation to visual stimuli, even in neonatal infants (e.g., Hershenson, 1964), suggest that nonsocial visual stimulation may be reinforcing for the young infant. Recently, Siqueland (1966) obtained acquisition and conditioned suppression of high amplitude sucking in four-month-old infants, using visual stimuli as reinforcers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Operant conditioning of head turning for visual reinforcement in three-month infants

Levison

1967

Psychon Sci

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Visual discrimination in the human newborn.

Cited by 161 publications

References 4 publications

Size constancy at birth: Newborn infants' responses to retinal and real size

Size constancy at birth: Newborn infants' responses to retinal and real size

Neonatal visual information processing in cocaine-exposed and non-exposed infants

Operant conditioning of head turning for visual reinforcement in three-month infants

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