Английский язык учебник

Hearing

3

Newborn infants will startle at the sound of a loud noise. They will also turn their head toward the source of a sound. Interestingly, the head turning response disappears at about 6 weeks and does not reemerge un til 3 or 4 months, at which time the infants will also search with their eyes for the source of the sound. The temporary disappearance of the head turning response probably represents a maturational transition from a reflexive response controlled by subcortical areas of the brain to a voluntary attempt to locate the source of the sound. By 4 months, infants will reach toward the source of a sound in the dark; by 6 months, they show a marked increase in their res ponsiveness to sounds that are accompanied by visu al stimuli and are able to pinpoint the location of a sound more precisely, an ability that continues to improve into their second year.

Newborn infants can also detect the difference bet ween very similar sounds, such as two tones that are only one note apart on the musical scale, and they can distinguish between the human voice and other kinds of sounds.

4

They can also distinguish among various charac teristics of human speech. For example, 1 month old infants can tell the difference between similar sounds such as “pa” and “ba”. Infants can distinguish between some speech sounds better than adults can. These are sounds that adults “hear” as identical because there is no distinction between them in their native lan guage. For example, “ra” and “la” are separate sounds in English but not in Japanese. Japanese in

fants can distinguish between them, but Japanese adults cannot.

By 6 months the child will have picked up enough information about the language so that it too will begin to “screen out” sounds that it does not use. Thus, hu man infants appear to be born with perceptual mecha nisms of human speech that will help them in learning language.

Taste and smell

5

Infants can discriminate between different tastes shortly after birth. They prefer sweet tasting liquids over liquids that are salty, bitter, sour, or bland. The characteristic response of the newborn to a sweet li quid is a relaxed expression resembling a slight smile, sometimes accompanied by lip licking. A sour solution produces pursed lips and a wrinkled nose. In response to a bitter solution, the baby will open its mouth with the corners turned down and stick out its tongue in what appears to be an expression of disgust.

Newborns can also discriminate among odors. They will turn their head toward a sweet smell and their heart rate and respiration will slow down; these are in dicators of attention. Noxious odors such as those of ammonia or rotten eggs cause them to turn their head away; their heart rate and respiration accelerate, indi cating distress. Infants are even able to discriminate among subtle differences in smells. After nursing for only a few days, an infant will constantly turn its head toward a pad saturated with its mother’s milk in pre ference to one saturated with another mother’s milk. Only breast fed infants show this ability to recognize the mother’s odor. When bottle fed babies are given a choice between the smell of their familiar formula and that of a lactating breast, they will choose the latter.

Thus, there seems to be an innate preference for the odor of breast milk. In general, the ability to distin guish among smells has a clear adaptive value. It helps infants avoid noxious substances, thereby increasing their chances of survival.

Learning and memory

6

It was once thought that infants could neither learn nor remember. This is not the case; evidence for early learning and remembering comes from several studies. In one, infants only a few hours old learned to turn their heads right or left, depending on whether they heard a buzzer or a tone. In order to taste a sweet liquid, the baby had to turn to the right when a tone sounded and to the left when a buzzer sounded. After only a few trials the babies were performing without error – turning to the right when the tone sounded and to the left when the buzzer sounded. The experimenter then reversed the situation so that the infant had to turn the opposite way when either the buzzer or the tone sounded. The babies mastered this new task quickly.

By the time they are 3 months old, infants have good memories. When a mobile over an infant’s crib was attached to one of the baby’s limbs by a ribbon, 3 month old infants quickly discovered which arm or leg would move the mobile. When the infants were placed in the same situation eight days later, they remem bered which arm or leg to move.

7

More startling is evidence that infants remember sensations they experienced before birth, while still in their mother’s uterus. We noted earlier that newborn infants can distinguish the sound of the human voice

from other sounds. A few days after birth infants will learn to suck on an artificial nipple in order to turn on recorded speech or vocal music, sucking more vigo rously to hear speech sounds than to hear nonspeech sounds or instrumental music. They also prefer heart beat sounds and female voices over male voices, and they prefer their mother’s voice to those of other wo men. These preferences appear to stem from the infant’s prenatal experience with sounds. For example, the mother’s voice can also be heard in the uterus, which would appear to explain why a newborn infant prefers her voice over others. Perhaps most surprising is evi dence that the unborn infant may actually be learning to discriminate among some of the sounds of individu al words. In an extraordinary experiment, pregnant women recited passages from children’s stories each day during the last six weeks of pregnancy. For exam ple, some women recited the first 28 paragraphs of Dr. Seuss’ story The Cat in the Hat. Other recited the last 28 paragraphs of the same story, but with the main nouns changed so that it was about the “dog in the fog” instead of the “cat in the hat”. By the time the infants were born, they had heard one of the selected stories for a total of about 3 1/2 hours.

Two or three days after the infants were born, they were permitted to suck on a special pacifier wired to record sucking rates. Sucking on the pacifier turned on a tape recording of either mother’s voice or an unfa miliar woman’s voice reciting either the story the in fants had heard before birth or the story they had not heard previously. As in previous experiments, the in fants showed by their sucking rates that they pre ferred their mother’s voice to the stranger’s. The star tling finding, however, was that they also preferred the familiar story over the unfamiliar one – even when the two stories were read by the stranger.

In sum, the research which has been described challenges the view of the newborn as experiencing the

world as “buzzing, blooming confusion” as well as the view that the child enters the world as a “blank slate”. Clearly, the infant enters the world well prepared to perceive and learn.

Carolyn D. Smith “Hilgard’s Introduction to Psycho logy”, Thirteenth Edition, USA, 2000, pp. 72–76

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Exercise 1. Say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

T F 11. When infants are 3 months old, they have good memories.

T F 12. Infants suck more vigorously when they hear male voices.

T F 13. Infants prefer the familiar story over the unfamiliar one.

Exercise 2. Choose from the list below the sentence which best summarizes each part (1 7). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

A.Infants have an ability to distinguish among smells and tastes.

B.Newborn infants respond to different sounds.

C.Infants enter the world well prepared to perceive and learn about the environment.

D.Newborn infants can learn and remember early.

E.Despite the immaturity of infants’ visual system, they spend a lot of time actively looking about.

F.Infants’ preferences seem to stem from their pre natal experience with sounds.

G.Early cognitive development depends on sensori motor activities.

H.Infants are born with perceptual mechanism of hu man speech.

Exercise 3. Make up questions to the following an swers.

1.

at the end of the 19th century.

2.

because babies cannot explain what they are do ing and thinking.

3.

to change the baby’s environment in some way and to observe the responses.

4.

at the age of 2.

5.

to areas of high contrast.

6.

the differences between very similar sounds.

7.

a relaxed expression resembling a slight smile.

8.

because there is an innate preference for the odor of breast milk.

9.

the sensations they experience before birth.

10.

because mother’s voice can be heard in the ute rus.

11.

the view of the newborn as experiencing the world as “buzzing, blooming confusion”.

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Exercise 1. Match the English word combinations in the left hand column with the Russian equivalents in the right hand column.

Exercise 2.

A.Guess the meaning and give the appropri ate translation of the following English terminological word combinations.

B.Convey the meaning of some terms above in your own words.

Exercise 3.

A.Fill in the columns with the proper deri vatives of the following words whenever possible.

B.Put a suitable word from the box above into each gap.

1.Chimpanzees that were reared in darkness for their first 16 months could _____ light but could not

_____ among patterns.

2.Freud was particularly impressed by the principle of _____ of energy which states that energy may be changed into different forms but it is neither created nor destroyed.

3.During this period, infants derive pleasure from nursing and _____ and begin to put anything they can reach into their months.

4.This _____ text on adult psychology draws on cur rent theories and anecdotal evidence of the adult years.

5.This tendency to interpret things or people in a way that satisfies our motives is typical of the manner in which our mental processes operate in perception. The _____ can also happen.

6.Trying to _____ the cause of your discomfort may help you see the situation in a new light.

7.Developmental psychologists generally agree that the kinds of findings show that Piaget _____ chil dren’s abilities, and his theory has been challenged on many grounds.

8.Grasping an object each time it appears allows, ac cording to Piaget’s theory, the child to _____ its various features and properties.

9.A highly _____ color is vivid and rich, a poorly

_____ one is faded and washed out.

Exercise 4. Arrange the following words in pairs of

(a)synonyms and (b) antonyms:

a)to accommodate, to assimilate, bland, to designate, to discriminate, to adapt, to indicate, ingenuity, permanent, to absorb, suave, prevalent, inventive ness, to distinguish, lasting, widespread;

b)to arouse, comprehensive, curved, discriminative, noxious, to suppress, straight, to override, to satu rate, uncomprehensive, undistinguished, underes timate, harmless, to dry, to estimate, to take into account

Exercise 5.

A.Put the words from the box below under the following headings connected with the capacities of the newborn:

–vision

–hearing

–taste and smell

–other words