Reading Activity Week #14 (Due Monday)

I chose to read chapter 13 which was about olfaction or the sense of smell. This chapter sparked my attention because I am always baffled by the fact that I can have a memory and the smell that is attached to it is so strong. When I was little my sister and me loved to make potions, we would find regular household items and stir them up and hope that we had made something cool. Obviously we never really made anything too great but I have a vivid memory of one in particular. We had mixed together milk, detergent, Hi-C juice, and a few other ingredients. As soon as we mixed it together we knew something was wrong. I will never ever forget that smell. Being two young children we were afraid of getting in trouble so we put it under the bed in the guest bedroom. My mom then took us out for lunch and I sat there the entire time and worried about what would happen the next time my mom went into our guest bedroom. Luckily we fessed up because we were afraid it was going to explode. I do not remember how much trouble we were in but like I said I will never forget the smell.
I began reading this chapter with 2 main questions in mind and ended up stumbling upon many interesting concepts. My original questions were; why do smells make us gag and why do we remember smells so well? The second question I was able to find a good concrete answer for and the first I had no luck with, which was what I disliked about the chapter. I might attempt to figure that out for my topical blog. It turns out that people remember odors in most cases because they go through the amygdala-hippocampal complex. This area allows us to store unique emotions along with the odors. This makes sense because form previous chapters we know that the hippocampus is responsible for different parts of short and long term memory. I believe that this will be my most useful S&P tool for this week because I think a lot of people wonder about smell and memory and I will be excited to explain this to them.
The first part of being able to remember a smell, believe it or not, is actually smelling the odor when it becomes volatile and floats through the air. This also interested me. When the olfactory epithelium detects a smell it can do a few things with it. It can make it into a feeling. By this I mean that if you smell a certain smell you can associate a memory or feeling with it. Such as when you smell a hot apple pie candle you can nearly taste the pie by having the odorant processes by the trigeminal nerves. I think it is quite amazing how many companies have capitalized on this process. If you smell that candle too long on the other hand you may come across cognitive habituation, which happens when you are around a smell for a long period of time. This process would happen to me when I worked at the Fareway Food Store. In my hometown the grocery store had a smoker, to smoke meats. At first the smell would make me feel a little sick because it was so strong but after a while I would no longer be able to smell it.
Speaking of being sick, if you have a cold you may develop a short case of anosmia. This would cause you to not be able to smell for a short time. What I found interesting about this was that maybe this is part of the reason that this chapter is at the back of our book and the authors find it to be one of our lesser senses. If your sense of smell can just go away if you get sick from the average head cold that puts it at an obvious weakness when compared to our other senses. If my sight went away every time I came down with the flu this would be far more horrible than I can even imagine. I am interested in learning more about pheromones because people seem very interested in them and I see a lot of phony looking research about them, such as from perfume companies. I mentioned above the other topic that I was hoping to learn more about for my topical blog.

Terms: volatile, odor, odorant, olfactory epithelium, anosmia, trigeminal nerves, cognitive habituation, hippocampus, and amygdala-hippocampal complex.

For this week, I chose chapter 11, Touch as my chapter of interest. Why, well because touch is interesting, and that’ just on the service. When deprived of sight, the blind used hearing and touch to get around their environment. And as something that we have general knowledge and take for granted, there’s much more to it then what meets the eye.

Touch itself is the term used to refer to the sensation caused by mechanical displacements of the skin. Tactile implies touch while including the perception of temperature changes, sensation of pain, itchiness, and internal sensations about our limbs in space. All together, these senses and perceptions are combined into a term called somatosensation that implies all the sensory signals we receive from our bodies. What allows a person to touch though is the touch receptors that are embedded everywhere in the skin. The formally called epidermis, it’s the outer layer of skin, and the dermis is the underlying layer which has the mechanoreceptors in it. These mechanoreceptors are sensory receptors that are responsive to mechanical simulation like pressure, vibration and movement. Quiet interesting that something we take for granted and simple as is, is a lot more advanced then we expect.

Another thing I found interesting is also the way that sensation perception goes from our fingers to our brains. The spinothalamic pathway is the route from the spine to the brain that carries most of the information about skin temperature and pain. So while the receptors in our skin is important, so is our spine and brain in order to perceive touch. And it all happens quicker than a blink of an eye. There are two areas that are within that pathway that receive that information. Somatosensory area 1 is primarily the receiving area for touch in the cortex, while somatosensory area 2 is the secondary receiving are for touch in the cortex of the brain.

Another thing that I’ve always sort of found interesting is pain and how it’s subjective. Pain sensations are triggered by the nociceptors. Those signals carry on to the substantia gelatinosa, a jellylike region of the interconnecting neurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. The dorsal horn itself is a region at the rear of the spinal cord that receives these pain inputs from receptors in the skin. Such a simple thing as pain is sensed and in an instant our brain receives the signal and usually resulting in a person removing the pain. The part the brain that receives unpleasantness and pain is called the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC). And there are even people that do not even feel pain, which my be my topical blog for Thursday.

So what did I find least interesting, was probably the two-point threshold, defined as the minimum distance at which two stimuli are just perceptible as separate. I’ve already hear of it, and remember the distance, as I think doctors did this on my brother on his finger when he cut it and severed part of the nerve. Testing the threshold of where and if he could feel it.

Terms: two point threshold, anterior cingulated cortex, substantia gelatinosa, dorsal horn, Somatosensory area 1, somatosensory area 2, somatosensation, dermis, epidermis, mechanoreceptors spinothalamic pathway

The chapter that I chose to do is chapter 14 about Taste because I remember my friend’s grandpa who was unable to taste anything. He said that he hated eating because he could literally not taste anything but he had to eat because he needed energy and nutrients. The three concepts that I found interesting in this chapter are taste versus flavor, the four basic tastes, and specific hungers.
Food molecules are almost always perceived by both our gustatory and olfactory systems. When we taste something the food molecules are dissolved in our saliva and passed over the receptors on our taste buds. When we chew and swallow foods, other molecules are released into the air inside our mouths and forced up behind the palate into the nasal cavity, where they make contact with the olfactory epithelium and stimulate our olfactory receptors. The brain will then take these retronasal olfactory sensations together with our gustatory sensations into a kind of metasensation known as flavor. Retronasal olfactory sensations are the perceived odors when chewing and swallowing force an odorant in the mouth up and behind the palate into the nose. Such odor sensations are perceived as originating from the mouth, even though the actual contact of odorant and receptor occurs at the olfactory mucosa. Flavor is the combo of true taste and retronasal olfaction. The perception of localizing taste sensations is due in part to the tactile sensations evoked by chewing and swallowing, and in part to taste. Because we taste and feel the food only in your mouth, your brain concludes that the food is only perceived in the mouth. The chorda tympani is the cranial nerve that carries taste information from the anterior mobile tongue. The chorda tympani nerve leaves the tongue with the lingual branch of the trigeminal nerve and then passes through the middle ear on its way to the brain. The cranial nerves are the twelve pairs of nerves that originate in the brain stem and reach sense organs and muscles through the opening in the skull. What is interesting is that the connections between taste and smell have been understood by the food industry for many years. An example of this is when a juice company that wants to sell pear juice, add sugar to the drink so that the pear flavor is more prominent and sweeter.
The amount of basic tastes that we can experience as humans is very limited. The four basic and universally accepted tastes are salty, sour, bitter, and sweet. One of the most important features of these basic tastes is that our liking or disliking them is hardwired in the brain, in other words, we are born with liking or disliking certain tastes. Salts are made up of two charged particles, a cation and a anion. Sodium must be available in relatively large quantities to maintain nerve and muscle function, loss of body sodium leads to death. Our ability to perceive saltiness is not static. Beauchamp and colleagues showed that diet can affect the perception of saltiness. Individuals who are initially successful in reducing their sodium intake will find that foods they used to love now may now taste too salty. The change in perception helps them keep their sodium intake down. Also, one can modify their likeness of salt. L.J. Stein found that experiences during gestation can also affect salt preference.

The taste of sour is the taste of acids. Some people may like the sourness of acids more than other people. It is all based on preference. Most adults like the amount of acidic content in pickles and sauerkraut whereas children enjoy the acidic content in sour candy. At high concentrations, acids will damage both external and internal body tissues.
The approach of using sugar to make tonic water not taste so bitter because of its high quinine content, is an approach that works because the sweet and bitter tastes inhibit one another, therefore, tonic water tastes much less bitter than the quinine content alone would and also tastes much less sweet than the sugar added alone would. Tonic water actually contains about the same amount of sugar as do other carbonated beverages. Each bitter receptor does not project via a specific bitter neuron. In other words, although a great many different compounds taste bitter, we do not generally distinguish between the tastes of these compounds. Thankfully, compounds that taste bitter to us tend to be poisonous.

Sweetness is evoked by sugars. Glucose, one of the sweetest-tasting sugars, is the principal sources of energy in humans. The biological function of sweet is different from that of bitter, and the way taste receptors are tuned supports the biological difference. Many different molecules taste bitter, but our biological task is not to distinguish among them but rather to avoid them all. Thus we have multiple bitter receptors to encompass the chemical diversity in poisons, but they all feed to the common thread of rejection. With regard to sweet, some biologically useless sugars have structures similar to those of gluclose, fructose, and sucrose. The task of the taste system is to tune receptors so specifically that the biologically important sugars stimulate sweet taste but others do not.
The specific hungers theory is the idea that deficiency of a given nutrient produces craving for that nutrient. Curt Richter first proposed this idea and demonstrated that cravings for salty or for sweet are associated with deficiencies in those substances. However, the idea proved wrong for other nutrients such as vitamins. Ingestion of the nutrient brings back balance to the body. It was thought at one time that the brain which depends on glucose for fueld, could be forcibly rested if blood glucose were driven to very low values with insulin. Intense cravings for sweet were an unexpected by-product of the therapy. Later laboratory studies confirmed that insulin injections produced increased liking for sweet tasting things. The success of this specific theory spurred further investigations that ultimately proved that the theory was limited only to sweet and salty.

The thing that I found most confusing and therefore least interesting in the chapter was the section on genetics and their role in variance in taste experience. I found it the least interesting because I just thought it to be really confusing, especially the terminology. The parts that I thought were most beneficial in our learning about sensation and perception was the section about taste versus flavor and the different types of tastes. I found this to be most beneficial because if we are able to understand the difference between tasting something and the flavor of something than we can understand most concepts in the chapter. At an early age we are able to comprehend our four types of tastes, but knowing more about these four basic tastes expands our knowledge in a more appropriate way.

TERMS: gustatory system, olfactory system, retronasal olfactory sensations, nasal cavity, palate, olfactory epithelium, olfactory receptors, metasensation, flavor, chorda tympani , lingual branch, trigeminal nerve , cranial nerves , salty, sour, bitter, sweet, cation, anion, the specific hungers theory

The chapter that I chose to read this week was chapter 14. This chapter covered taste. One of the main reasons I decided to read this one is because I wanted to learn more about differences in taste. I knew before I read the chapter that people do not taste the same so I wanted to learn a little bit about why that is.
I found out that there is a real answer to why our tongues are bumpy. Of course that is something that is interesting to me. The reason that the tongue appears bumpy is because of papillae. I found out that there are four types of papillae and only three of them have taste buds in them. filiform papillae accounts for the largest number of bump and it has absolutely no taste function. Next there are fungiform papillae and they are located on the edges of the tongue especially the tip. Foliate papillae are folds of tissue located on the rear of the tongue lateral to the circumvallate papillae. Finally there is the circumvallate papillae which are circular structures that form an inverted v on the rear of the tongue. I never knew that the tongue was anything near this complex.
Although I did think it was cool that the author broke down the four basic tastes I did not find that to be especially interesting. What I did find interesting about this is that there is something called umami that is suggested as the fifth basic taste. As I read this I thought a fifth basic taste? Why have I never heard of this? Umami is the taste that is produce by monosodium glutamate. It is responsible for detecting proteins. The reason that it is only suggested and not recognized as a fifth basic taste is because the body is not hardwired for it. In some individuals umami is pleasant but not necessarily in everyone. Although it is not officially a basic taste I still find it pretty interesting that there is something that could even be debated as a basic taste besides the obvious four.
As I stated before I was already aware of the fact that not all foods taste the same to everyone, but this section was still interesting to me. There was a project called the Human Genome Project that did some pretty in depth research on bitterness. What this research revealed was that there are about 25 different genes just for bitter taste. With this knowledge they were able to designate people as either a nontaster or a supertaster. Those who are called nontasters only taste a little bitterness and supertasters are the opposite. I think that I would probably be closer to a nontaster. It was also interesting to think about the fact that things like this have a great effect on ones diet.
The section that discussed the coding of taste quality was pretty confusing to me. What the section talked about was a theory called labeled lines. What this theory suggests is that each taste nerve fiber is specifically coded for a particular taste. This has been disproved however I believe. Since this is not true we never experience pure taste.
What I believe to be the most important thing to understanding Sensation and Perception would definitely be how foods are perceived. They are perceived by both the gustatory and the olfactory systems. What that says is that what we smell impacts what we taste. The two things that I would like to learn more about are taste buds and how they can be damaged and also about those who are unable to taste.

Key Terms: papillae, filiform papillae, fungiform papillae, foliate papillae, circumvallate papillae, Umami, nontasters, supertasters, labeled lines

I chose Chapter 14 on taste for no special reason - I guess I just wanted to delve into an area like taste or olfaction where I was not quite sure what sort of vocabulary definitions would be involved or what the parameters of the chapter would be. I first enjoyed the portion on specific hungers. I have often pondered the idea of whether food cravings could ever actually be indicative of any real underlying physiological deficit, and it appears that there is actually a legitimate theory to support this personal curiosity. The specific hungers theory poses the thought that a bodily need for a specific nutrient brings about a craving for that nutrient. Over the years, it was shown that these theory does not hold for substances other than salt and sugar. Our taste preferences for different types of food are then explained as a combination of innate affect from the sense of taste with a learned affect provided by the sense of smell.

Another cool sensation was the part on supertasters. Natural genetic variation has led to a wide spectrum in which tasting abilities may fall. The perceived intensity of a taste varies both for different taste qualities and with concentration. This effect is then heightened by individuals called supertasters who perceive the most intense tastes thanks in part to a greater density of fungiform papillae on the tongue. These unique people are more adept at cross-modality matching, that is, comparing and matching sensory input across different sensory modalities. Therefore, supertasters may associate the strongest visual imagery with some of the strongest tasting things they know. Supertasters also experience the strongest oral burn from spicy foods as well as more intense retronasal olfaction.

And finally, I was also quite interested in the discussion of umami and its implications. Umami is a unique taste sensation brought about by monosodium glutamate, or MSG, the sodium salt of glutamic acid. Receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate are located throughout the body, which gave some credence to the rationale that these receptors may be used by the taste system to signal a fifth basic taste. However, more recent research indicates that the amino acids that compose proteins are detected by these glutamate receptors because the proteins themselves are too large to be detected by the senses of taste or smell.

The least interesting portion of this chapter was the section on coding of taste quality. It just seemed extremely dry when discussing how individual neurons signal the presence of a certain type of taste - quite necessary, but not very intriguing. I would enjoy learning more about supertasters and cross-modality matching in class. I think the most important thing I learned in this chapter in regards to sensation and perception as a whole is that taste is a much more varied set of sensations than we generally give it credit for. There is a great deal of variance and several underlying purposes behind why certain taste adaptations function the way in which they do.

Terms: taste, olfaction, specific hunger theory, supertaster, fungiform papillae, tongue, cross-modality matching, oral burn, retronasal olfaction, umami, monosodium glutamate (MSG)

I decided to do my Reading assignment over Taste, which is covered in chapter fourteen. I guess there was really no particular motive for picking this chapter over the other; I thought they would all be full over new material I could learn. With that said I happened to land on this chapter and decided it would be appropriate to learn more about taste and our gratification from food since I was eating a cinnamon roll at the time. One concept that stuck out to me rather quickly and early on in the chapter was an anatomical feature known as the papilla. There are four major papillae, three in which taste buds are present, and one without. Papillae are the small bumps on the top of the tongue. The smallest type of papillae is the filiform papillae and does not have taste buds. They also provide most of the bumpy appearance on the tongue as well. The following three types of papillae all contain taste buds: Fungiform, foliate, circumvallate. Fungiform papillae are so named because of their mushroom like resemblance. They are located on the anterior portion of the tongue along with the filiform papillae. Foliate papillae are located in the back of the mouth on the rear section of the tongue. Taste buds are buried underneath the folds. Circumvallate papillae form a V on the back of the tongue and are the largest of all papillae. I found this to be quite interesting because I never really had a good idea of what the tiny bumps on the tongue actually were. It’s amazing how many different kinds of papillae there are instead of just one general kind. Something else I found beneficial was the discussion of our four basic tastes we have. Even though this has been something I’ve learned about in the past, the text gave me a more insight look as well as molecular structures for each. The chemical components of a cation (sodium) and an anion (chloride) make up salt. NaCl is the purest taste of salt and is most commonly used as table salt in regular households. One interesting bit of information regarding salty taste is that those with a reduced sodium intake diet show increased intensity of saltiness over a period of time. In other words, the less salt that is ingested the greater benefit for the body (typically), and those foods with greater amounts of salt become too salty. Our liking and perception of saltiness is not static. Sour, which is my least favorite type of taste, is due to acids. One common acid found to give a gratifying taste to many is lactic acid. The taste of bitter is unique in the sense that some bitter tasting foods can provide benefits to help fight cancer. Other bitter tasting substances can also be poisonous and extremely detrimental toward health. Typically bitter tasting foods are unpleasant. Quinine is one example of a bitter compound, and is thought to treat malaria. Sweet is probably the most favorable of the four tastes. Sweet tastes come from simple carbohydrates such as sugars. Some sugars include fructose, glucose, and sucrose. Another point of interest that I have always had some curiosity about is specific hunger, or the specific hunger theory. This states that there is a deficiency of a nutrient that causes a craving for it. After research studies, there have been findings that only support this theory based on two of the four basic tastes: salty and sweet. Cravings are very common and often reported by individuals throughout the day. The availability of these sweet and salty foods makes it more difficult to manage weight and other motivational factors that prevent overeating, or unhealthy eating. Something I didn’t really care much for in the text was the part about health consequences of taste sensation. I feel it’s fairly common knowledge among most people that eating healthy, which means low amounts of these sweet and salty items high in fat, is beneficial for longevity. Plus, it’s depressing to read information about greater risks for cancer and other disease if you do or do not eat something. I personally feel there are a lot of concepts that will benefit me most in my understanding of sensation and perception. For this reason it’s somewhat hard for me to pick out one specific word or section on the chapter of taste. From the learning of papillae to the information regarding different experiences in taste such as salty, sweet, bitter, and sour they all provide beneficial information. Since I had some prior knowledge on the four basic tastes, I’m going to say that papillae and the features of the tongue will prove to be most beneficial in my understanding of what sensation and perception is. This is the starting point of where taste is experienced and enjoyed and plays such an important role in life. Two concepts I want to learn more about are nonstasters and tasters of PTC/PROP. I simply chose these two terms because of my fascination of unusual events in life. Something else I might choose to research, however, is chili peppers. I want to learn more about why people enjoy them so much, when others (such as myself) absolutely hate anything hot.
Terms: Papilla, filiform papilla, fungiform papilla, foliate papilla, circumvallate papilla, salty, sour, bitter, sweet, specific hunger theory.

I chose the chapter over taste because I overall find this chapter the most interesting. I also have an interest in dentistry so this ties into dentistry in some way. Some things I found very interesting from this chapter was taste versus flavor, taste buds and taste receptor cells and the definition of what the four basic flavors are. My first subject of taste versus flavor is very interesting because I learned that flavor is the combination of true taste, which can be anything from salty, sweet, sour, bitter, etc. and retro nasal olfaction. Retro nasal olfactory sensation is that of an odor that is perceived when chewing and swallowing. Many people who do not enjoy something they are eating plug their nose due to this sensation. When you block the airflow that carries odorants through the retro nasal passage. This is also the case when individuals have colds, many people cannot taste anything while they have a cold.

My second subject I found fascinating were the subject of taste buds and taste receptor cells. Taste buds are actually a cluster of elongated cells, however on the tips of these clusters lie microvilli which is the site where the taste substances bind to. Taste receptors have a limited life space, in fact after 10 days they die and are replaced by new cells. I then learned about what the four basic tastes, salty, sour, bitter and sweet. We as humans are hot wired to know these taste and also being able to differentiate between them. The specifics taste all have a certain purpose, for example the bitter taste subsystem is nature’s poison detector.
Something I found however in this chapter that was the least interesting was the subject of coding taste quality. There was a lot of chemistry based and for me; chemistry is not my favorite subject. The one thing that will really help me better understand sensation and perception was the subject of chili pepper. I never understood why some people could tolerate hot food and others couldn’t until now. I now know that individuals may have fungiform papillae, otherwise known as supertasters) have the most fibers mediating pain making them the individuals who perceive the most oral burns from chili. Another reason why is that capsaicin, the chemical that produces the burn in chilies, desensitizes pain receptors. This means that the individual who eats chili a lot are chronically desensitized. Two subjects that I would like to learn more informational bout it the anatomy and physiology of the gustatory system and super tasters.

Terms: retro nasal olfaction, flavor, taste, taste buds, taste receptor cells, microvilli, salty, sour, bitter, sweet, coding taste quality, fungiform papillae, supertasters, capsaicin, gustatory system.

I chose chapter 13 on touch because gazing through it, I found a lot of things that really caught my eye and seemed interesting.
One thing I found interesting about this chapter was the phantom limb! I remember reading someone's blog from last semester about it earlier this semester when we were sampling blogs. The phantom limb blows my mind! When one has an amputated arm, for example, the person will feel, when stimulated, the hand that was once there. They will either feel it on their amputated arm, or, what really blows my mind, on their face!! They actually feel a hand on their face!! WHAT?! That's insane to me! I can't even imagine what that would feel like, and honestly, I hope i never do.
Secondly I found analgesia and the endogenous opiate to be very interesting. I just got done doing a presentation for my complementary and alternative medicine class on meditation for cancer patients. Research shows that meditation can reduce the pain of illness. I liked reading about analgesia, because it related a lot towards meditation and getting rid of your pain organically. Andogenous opiates was also interesting. The book uses an example of a soldier in battle who gets wounded but doesn't feel the pain until after the stress is over. It's like your body puts it on hold. I have known this to happen, but have never experienced it. Very interesting information.
Thirdly, I have always loved the idea of the placebo effect. The mind is such a powerful place that most people, I believe, take for granted. The placebo effect is demonstrated when taking "sugar pills" but the subject actually think it is a pill that will heal them. For example a tylonal. If one takes a pill thinking it is tylonal, their minds might just trick them into thinking that their head ache is gone. And, well, it really is gone. This is also tied into my meditation studies. If you train your mind just so (meditate a lot), you can actually control your pain. It's a crazy crazy thing, but something that we have complete control over, and most people don't even know that can do it!
One thing I did not find interesting about this chapter was everything about touch physiology. As things things are very important, it's just boring to me. It does, however help me understand more about touch and how it works, physiologically.
Gosh, almost everything about this chapter would be good to know in understanding sensation and perception. From the touch to the perceived touch. I would say to get a very good idea of sensation and perception you would need to know the physiology of touch. But if you wanted to know the fun stuff, I would go with things like phantom limb, and why it is so.
One thing I would like to research more is tactile agnosia. This is the inability to identify objects by touch. Sounds very interesting and I would like to know more!
Second thing I would like to know more about is the phantom limb!! I would love to find tutorials of people who have experienced this!
Terms: phantom limb, tactile agnosia, placebo effect, analgesia, endogenous opiate.

After looking through the remaining chapters in the textbook, I decided I wanted to read Chapter 16 about Perceptual Development. I skimmed this chapter and decided it would be interesting due to wanting to have children in the future, and this would be very helpful to understand what newborns and infants can or cannot perceive.



 1. One of the topics I found interesting was how newborns perceive. When psychologist first started researching this topic, they did not think that newborns or infants could perceive much at all, but that isn’t true. The history of understanding newborn perception was mostly discovered around the 19th century. There are many difficulties when a researcher is trying to use infants as subjects because the cry, sleep, or cannot verbally respond back to the psychologists. Newborns and infants are able to perceive faces and colors. Newborns have larger and less cones than the adult eye. The newborns inner segment of the cone is thicker and shorter than adults also which makes things look different from the perspective of a newborn versus an adult. This is how the two are different by the cones in the retina.



2. The second topic I found interesting is how newborns recognize their mother. I thought this was interesting, because I have always wanted to know personally how long it would take to have my children recognize my face. According to the textbook Ian Bushnell used 2 day old infants and have them chose between looking at their mothers or strangers and the infants 63% of the time looked for their mother and recognized her. However, this raises the questions, did the child hear her voice and know what it sounds like? Also, how can one really rely on this research to know that is why the infants are looking around. Could it be possible that it is very extremely hard to test on infants and newborns in general? There was another stay done by Olivier Pascalis that had some of the mothers cover their hair lines with a scarf and the child was unable to identify their mother, and they concluded that the dark or light hairlines are important to recognize their mother.



3. The third topic I found interesting was asking more about the research of perceptual development. I wanted to focus on this because while I was reading this chapter, it was really hard for me to agree or understand how these studies were conducted. However, it was starting to make since when I read the section on how infants perceive color. There was a diagram on page 384. that showed what it was like for the development of perception of a cat from newborn to adult. The newborn to 3 months showed that the cat was blurry and it was hard to make out the colors and sharp outlines of the cat. The 6 month old was closely related to the adult vision. The brighter or light of an object is what many believe is the stimulus for infants to recognize color.

Once again the research was challenging to completely get a correct response and has to be critically observed by researchers.

I thought it was hard for me to understand the research designs because I just didnt think it could actually work because most of the examples seemed that there could be a third variable problem. There also asks the question, is this really ethical because the newborns and infants cannot consent to the study. Also, this could be a conflict in this type of research because you are trying to manipulate feeling, smell, hearing, or sight.



The most useful information I will take from this chapter is that I will understand when my baby is born they will be able to recognize my face and my smell. Also, I could conclude that my newborn would not be able to see sharp objects until about 6 months, which is something I did not know before reading this chapter. Moreover, this was useful because I used to babysit babies, and would wonder if they could really see me smiling at them and making faces at such a young age. There is a personal experience I had with my friends newborn that he would keep looking around and not really focus on one thing and his eyes looked cross eyed. This was answered by understand how newborns perceive things that are blurry and look around to find light or a bright stimuli to look at.



Two topics I would like to research more on why babies prefer more attractive looking faces than average faces, the textbook did not go into much detail and I think that would be interesting. Also, I would like to learn more about the perception development across species and how that would relate to human babies and if there are better ways to test these theories.



vocab: cones, retina, perception, newborn perceiving color