Design an experiment to test the following two questions: 1) Do infants detect the difference between 2 visual patterns by 2 months of age? 2) Is the ability to detect the difference between 2 visual patterns innate? Answer the following:
a) For the first question, the participants will all be infants that are 2 months of age, give or take a few days. For the second question, the participants will be infants that are 1.5 months of age, give or take a few days. This age is around the time infants vision is improving, when they are first born their vision would be too poor to conduct this experiment (Galotti 81).
b) Infants at 1 month of age prefer black and white designs, so the stimuli will be in black and white. Similar to the stimuli used …show more content…
If the stimuli were different colors or sizes and the infants stare at one stimuli over of the other, we could not say for certain that they are staring at the pattern, size, or color.
d) For these experiments, a modern eye tracking device will be used. Eye trackers can follow the gaze direction and eye movement of participants and this will work well in following the direction that the infants are looking and enable us to determine which pattern the infants look at (Eye Tracking).
e) The participants will be randomly assigned into 4 different groups. Each group will see either the solid circle, solid square, checkered square, or spiral circle in the habituation portion of the experiment. Once they have been shown the familiar stimuli for 1 minute, 3 separate times we will wait 15 minutes before showing the novel stimuli. If the infant was habituated to the solid circle than they will see the spiral circle in the test phase. If they saw the spiral circle in the habituation phase than they will see the solid circle in the test phase. If they saw the solid square in the habituation phase than they will see the checkered square in the test phase. Finally, if they saw the checkered square in the habituation phase than they will see the solid square in the test phase. The eye tracker will monitor the infant’s eye
a) For the first question, the participants will all be infants that are 2 months of age, give or take a few days. For the second question, the participants will be infants that are 1.5 months of age, give or take a few days. This age is around the time infants vision is improving, when they are first born their vision would be too poor to conduct this experiment (Galotti 81).
b) Infants at 1 month of age prefer black and white designs, so the stimuli will be in black and white. Similar to the stimuli used …show more content…
If the stimuli were different colors or sizes and the infants stare at one stimuli over of the other, we could not say for certain that they are staring at the pattern, size, or color.
d) For these experiments, a modern eye tracking device will be used. Eye trackers can follow the gaze direction and eye movement of participants and this will work well in following the direction that the infants are looking and enable us to determine which pattern the infants look at (Eye Tracking).
e) The participants will be randomly assigned into 4 different groups. Each group will see either the solid circle, solid square, checkered square, or spiral circle in the habituation portion of the experiment. Once they have been shown the familiar stimuli for 1 minute, 3 separate times we will wait 15 minutes before showing the novel stimuli. If the infant was habituated to the solid circle than they will see the spiral circle in the test phase. If they saw the spiral circle in the habituation phase than they will see the solid circle in the test phase. If they saw the solid square in the habituation phase than they will see the checkered square in the test phase. Finally, if they saw the checkered square in the habituation phase than they will see the solid square in the test phase. The eye tracker will monitor the infant’s eye