11. Developmental psychology Flashcards
Can a baby recognise its mother once its delivered?
Yes, as a memory of her has been built up in-utero via hearing, smell and taste
When can babies hear in the womb?
- Receptive hearing begins at 16/40
- Functional hearing begins at 24/40
This means the newborn babies are already familiar with their mother’s voices
What tastes can a newborn sense?
- All tastes except salt (until 4 months)
* This includes: sweet, bitter, sour and umami
What tastes does a newborn like?
- Sweet things - sweet-ease can be given before unpleasant procedure
- Glutamate - found in breast milk
Describe the sight of a newborn
- Can’t see very well
- Sharpest sight around the edges, rather than centre of field
- Learn to recognise face in first hour
- Preference to mother’s face at 12-36hrs
What is reciprocal socialisation?
- Bidirectional process where children socialise parents and vice versa
- Behaviours of mothers/cares and infants involve substantial interconnection, mutual recognition and synchronisation
- If the parent’s responses reinforces the infant’s effort, the infant will build on this interaction - scaffolding
What is the still face experiment?
- Carer first interacts normally with a baby
- Carer suddenly changes to neutral expression
- Baby responds by trying to get mother’s attention (smiling, loud noises etc.) and becomes distressed
How do babies of depressed mothers develop?
- Adjust to low stimulation
* Get used to lack of positive feelings
How do babies of agitated mothers develop?
- May stay over-aroused
* May switch off their feelings all-together
What is the internal working model?
- Describes the development of mental representations (worthiness of the self and expectations of others’ reactions to the self)
- Result of interactions with primary caregivers which become internalised (automatic process)
- Very start of attachment
- Forms our expectations and behaviour in wider relationships throughout our lives
What is attachment?
- Biological instinct that seeks proximity to an attachment figure when threat is perceived or discomfort is experienced
- Sense of safety - secure base to explore environment and promote development
What does it mean by parents having “Mind-mindedness”?
- Parents treat their children as individuals with minds
- Respond as if their children’s acts are meaningful - motivated by feelings, thoughts or intentions
- Mediates the internal working model - helps child understand others’ emotions and actions
At what ages does a baby prefer people to inanimate objects?
0-3 months
What what ages does a baby smile discriminately to main caregivers?
3-8 months
At what ages does a baby selectively approach main caregivers and show fear of strangers?
8-12 months
At what ages can attachment behaviour of a baby be measure reliably?
12+ months
What are the 4 styles of attachment (defined from the strange situation test)?
- Securely-attached children
- Insecurely-attached children
- Resistant-insecure (or ambivalent) children
- Disorganised-insecure children
What are “securely-attached children”?
- What we aim for
- Explores the room freely when mother is present
- May be distressed and explores less when mother is absent
- Happy when mother returns, and approaches and comforted by mother when crying
- Baby knows he can depend on his mother and mother is responsive to his needs
What are “insecurely-attached children”
- Doesn’t explore much
- Doesn’t show much emotion when his mother leaves
- No preference for his mother over a complete stranger
- Tends to avoid or ignore mother when he returns
What are “avoidant-insecure children”?
- Doesn’t explore much
- Very wary of strangers and distressed when mother leaves
- Ambivalent when mother returns
- However, resentful (even angry) at mother for leaving him in the first place
- Child may reject his mother’s advances as a result
What are “disorganised-insecure children”?
- Mix of avoidant and resistant behaviours
- Confusion and anxiety
- At risk for behavioural and developmental problems
What are the benefits to a child of a secure attachment?
- Promotes independence, emotional availability, better moods and emotional coping
- Associated with fewer behavioural problems, higher IQ and academic performance
- Contributes to a child’s moral development
- Reduces child distress
What is secure attachment in infancy associated with in adolescence and adulthood?
- Social competence
- Loyal friendships
- More secure parenting of offspring
- Greater leadership qualities
- Greater resistance to stress
- Less mental health problems and psychopathology
What are the benefits of play with a baby?
- Engage and interact with the world
- Experience mastery and control
- Practice decision-making
- Practice adult roles
- Promote language development
- Overcome fears
- Develop own interests
- Healthy activity level
What are the types of play for the following ages: • 0-3 months • 0-2 years • 2-2.5 years • 3-4 year
- 0-3 months - unoccupied: lots of movement with body
- 0-2 years - solitary
- 2-2.5 years - spectator: observes but doesn’t play with other children
- 2.5-3 years - parallel play: alongside others but doesn’t play with them
What are the types of play for the following ages:
• 3-4 years
• 4-6 years
• 6+ years
- 3-4 years - associated: interacts with others in their play, develops friendships and preferences with some children, mixed sex groups
- 4-6 years - co-operative: plays with shared aims of play with others, may be difficult but there is support with other children, normally single sex
- 6+ years - competitive: play involves rules and has a clear winner
What are “disorganised-insecure children”?
- Mix of avoidant and resistant behaviours
- Confusion and anxiety
- At risk for behavioural and developmental problems
What are the benefits to a child of a secure attachment?
- Promotes independence, emotional availability, better moods and emotional coping
- Associated with fewer behavioural problems, higher IQ and academic performance
- Contributes to a child’s moral development
- Reduces child distress
What is secure attachment in infancy associated with in adolescence and adulthood?
- Social competence
- Loyal friendships
- More secure parenting of offspring
- Greater leadership qualities
- Greater resistance to stress
- Less mental health problems and psychopathology
What are the benefits of play with a baby?
- Engage and interact with the world
- Experience mastery and control
- Practice decision-making
- Practice adult roles
- Promote language development
- Overcome fears
- Develop own interests
- Healthy activity level
What is the concrete operational stage?
- 7-12 years
- Children can perform basic mental operations concerning problems that involve tangible objects and situations
- Understand reversibility and display less egocentrism
- Trouble with hypothetical and abstract reasoning
What is the formal operational stage?
- Adolescence
- Transitional stage of physical and psychological human development
- Abstract thought emerges
- More thinking about moral, philosophical, ethical, social and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
- Begin to use deductive logic
What is proposed in Piaget’s Stage Model?
• Children's thinking changes qualitatively with age - result of interaction with brain's biological maturation and personal experiences • 4 stages of cognitive development: - sensorimotor stage - preoperational stage - concrete operational stage - formal operational stage
What is assimilation, accommodation and adaptation in the context of schemas?
- Assimilation - incorporating new experience into existing schema
- Accommodation - the difference made by the process of assimilation
- Adaptation - new experiences cause existing schema to change
What is the sensorimotor stage?
- 0-2 years
- Infants understand their world primarily through sensory experiences and physical (motor) interactions with objects
- Object permanence - understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen
- Gradually increasing use of words to represent things
- Learning based on trial and error (error not assimilated)
What is the preoperational stage?
- 2-7 years
- World represented symbolically through words and mental images
- No understanding of basic mental operations or rules
- Rapid language development
- Understanding of past and future
- No understanding of Principle of Conservation (basic properties of objects staying the same even though appearance may change)
- Irreversibility - cannot mentally reverse actions
- Animism - child assumes that everything exists with consciousness
- Egocentrism - difficulty in viewing world from someone else’s perspective
What is the concrete operational stage?
• 7-12 years
• Children can perform basic mental operations concerning problems that involve tangible objects and situations
•
What is the formal operational stage?
• Adolescence
• Transitional stage of physical and psychological human development
• Abstract thought emerges
• More thinking about moral, philosophical, ethical, social and political issues
•
Describe the behaviour of the adaptive adolescent brain (12-25 years)
- Extensive brain remodelling (myelinisation, synaptic pruning) - reason for so much sleep
- Help journey from secure world with parents to fitting into world created by peers
- Thrill seeking
- Openness to new expereinces
- Strong social rewards
- Prefer own age company
- Less positive emotionality through early adolescence
- Storms and stress more likely
How does a child’s concept of death change through childhood?
- < 5 years - do not understand that death is final, will take euphemisms concretely, may think they have caused dearth
- 5-10 years - gradually develop idea of death as irreversible, more empathic to another’s loss, may be preoccupied with justice
- 10+ years - understand more long-term consequences, able to think hypothetically, review inconsistencies
Depends on cognitive development and experience
Should you describe death as going to sleep?
No, as child could associate sleep with dying => worry
