1.4 Understanding the everyday experiences of infants
In this section you will hear from Linda B. Smith, a Professor at Indiana University in the United States, who discusses her work on the Homeview Project. The project examines how early visual and auditory experiences (e.g. what infants see and hear) help infants break into language.
Activity 4
Watch Video 1 in which developmental psychologist Linda B. Smith discusses the Homeview Project. After watching the video all the way through once, watch it again and answer the questions that follow.
- What are the advantages of using head-mounted cameras for learning about development?
- Why is the ability to hold an object important for learning?
- How has Linda’s work changed the way in which psychologists investigate language development?
- What visual experiences were consistent across the two cultures that Linda examined?
Discussion
- The head-mounted cameras allow researchers to gain insights into what babies actually see, not what adults think they see. They allow researchers to move away from traditional psychology experiments in controlled environments to understand the way in which language is acquired in the course of everyday life
- When infants hold up an object it blocks out the distractors and controls the information that enters their eyes. Linda describes how this optimises the information that infants learn from. Linda also discusses research involving infants and children with developmental disorders. Infants and children who have impairments in their ability to move and hold objects are at a disadvantage as they are unable to create their own experiences from which they can learn (e.g. holding objects and sustaining attention). Seeing the world from the viewpoint of an infant shows where the problems are and how to make a difference.
- Words are learned rapidly. In the past, researchers studying language development would use what Linda referred to as a ‘discrete trial model’, in which infants are presented with an image of an object at the same time as hearing the name of the object. However, seeing an object/event/emotion and hearing a word at the same time isn’t necessarily how words are learned in the context of everyday events. Linda describes how real-world events are complex stories containing many different elements. In order to understand how infants break into language, researchers need to study how words are learned in the context of everyday events.
- Babies under four months old in India and the United States have similar face experiences (for 15 minutes out of every waking hour, they see faces up close and most of the faces belong to three different people). The visual experiences diverged as the infants in each culture got older. Early face experience is important for the development of face perception. For example, having cataracts in the first few months of life can lead to face perception impairments in adulthood. Linda’s findings also suggest that the first few months are particularly important for setting up the perceptual processes used to recognise faces.
In this section you have learned about an approach to studying development that aims to understand the everyday experiences of infants. As you move from the foundational experiences of infancy to exploring later stages of life, it is important to consider how cultural differences continue to shape our psychological development. One aspect of particular relevance to psychology (and to related fields, such as counselling and psychotherapy) is how the concepts of wellbeing and happiness are understood within different cultures. While infants’ early experiences set the stage for later development, our understanding of wellbeing encompasses a broad scope that spans an entire lifetime.
In the next section, you will develop your understanding of what it is to ‘live well’, then you will turn your attention to the ways in which different cultures conceptualise and pursue wellbeing.
OpenLearn - Psychology around the world
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