Chapter 10- Development 2

Question 1

Motor development:

Answer 1

changes in physical movement and body control

Follows these trends:

Question 2

Cepholocaudal Trend

Answer 2

Development proceeds from the head downwards

Babies gain control of their head first, then their arms, and then their legs

Question 3

Proximodistal Pattern

Answer 3

Growth proceeds from the centre of the body outwards

Children gain control of their arms before their hands, and their hands/feet before their fingers and toes

Question 4

Reflexes

Answer 4

involuntary responses to very specific stimuli
Grasping
Rooting: opening mouth in expectation of a breast
Sucking

Question 5

Fine motor skills

Answer 5

nvolve the coordination of the actions of many smaller muscles, along with information from the eyes to do some task
Assessed by drawing skills
2 years old: crude crayon scribbles
3-4 years old: crude drawings of people
5 years old: print letters, dress alone, use silverware
Training fine motor skills aids kindergarteners’ attention, especially in girls. Shows how joined cognition and action can be

Question 6

Habituation-dishabituation paradigm

Answer 6

Used to determine if an infant can detect the difference between a familiar and novel stimulus
Relies on the fact that people prefer novelty and pay less attention/habituate to a stimulus when it is repeatedly presented
Used to study abilities in sight, sounds, tastes, touches and smells
Violation of expectation
Ex: Present a baby with a photo of another baby, will initially look at the face for a few minutes and become more bored of it over time and stop looking
Present baby with stimulus that if different, like a photo of an old woman, will initially spend more time looking at it, or dishabituate to the new photo

Question 7

Preferential Looking

Answer 7

Developed by Robert Franz
Used to study infant’s preferences or certain visual stimuli
Measures which stimulus infant gazes at the longest
Stimuli they look at the longest is more pleasurable, interesting and complex
Babies as young as 4 months prefer looking at complex objects and whole faces

Question 8

5 major senses develop at different rates

hearing

Answer 8

Fully developed at birth

Question 9

Vision

Answer 9

Newborn’s vision is 20-600, can see an object that is 20ft/6meters away in the same way an adult would see and object 600ft/183 meters away
Visual sharpness/acuity improves during infancy
6 months of age: vision is 20-100
Age 3-4: vision similar to adults
Newborns don’t see colour well, best able to see black and white edges and patterns

Question 10

Critical period

Answer 10

Specific period in development
Individuals are most receptive to a particular kind of input from the environment
such as visual stimulation and language

Question 11

Depth perception

Answer 11

Measured by the Visual Cliff experiment

Question 12

Visual Cliff Test

Answer 12

Babies who have learned to crawl
Placed clear hard plastic over one end of crawl area to resemble a steep drop in the middle
Mothers encourage baby to crawl across plastic to her
6 month year olds: wiggled over the cliff
10 month year olds: stopped crawling when they reached the cliff
Indicates that when babies learn to crawl, they can perceive depth
Babies as young as one-and-a-half months notice the difference between the deep and shallow sides of the crawl area
Only babies who are crawling are afraid of the deep side
It is the babies’ experience of crawling and the development of the visual system that determines the development of depth perception

Children’s sensory systems mature rapidly in early infancy
After 2 years, sensory development slows down but come physical changes occur during elementary: ex: need glasses, changes in the ear for infection

Question 13

Synaptic Pruning

Answer 13

The degradation of synapses and dying of neurons that are not strengthened by experience
Nature’s way of making the brain more efficient
Required for normal brain development
Problems with neural priming are associated with neurological disorders, autism and schizophrenia
Based on input from environment

Question 14

After Birth Brain

Answer 14

Brain grows new neurons
0-2 years: Increase in growth of new synapses
After 2 years: Some neurons and synapses die off
After 6 years: Rate of brain growth slows down, increases in early adolescence, settles after adolescence
9 years showing early signs of puberty: Grey matter in prefrontal and parietal regions of the brain decreases in volume, suggesting that pruning is still occurring in late childhood

Question 15

Grey matter

Answer 15

consists of cell bodies, white matter consists of myelin and axons

Question 16

The number of ???? declines in adolescence, ???? grows into one’s 40’s

Answer 16

neurons/grey matter

white matter/axons+connectivity

Question 17

Normal and enriched environments:

Answer 17

create more complex neural connections

Question 18

Abusive, neglectful, impoverished environments

Answer 18

creates less developed neural connections and fewer of them

Example:
Physically fit children are more cognitively fit, do better in reasoning tasks and school

Question 19

Neglect

Answer 19

when caregivers fail to give basic sensory experience and stimulation to a child during key periods of development
Timing is critical
Causes decreased brain size, can be made up if children are removed from neglectful home early enough
Longer to stay in that environment, less likely to recover

Ex: Children who spent early years in Romanian orphanages
Confined to cribs, had very little stimulation
Neglected
Orphan has diminished brain activity

Question 20

Brain Plasticity in Children

Answer 20

Children’s brains are more plastic
More sensitive to stimulation from the outside world than older brains
Younger brains have less myelin, therefore more flexible. Makes neurotransmission more efficient but at a cost to neuroplasticity
Few neurons are myelinated at birth: myelination increases with age
There are protein molecules in myelin that stop axons from sprouting and forming new connections
Myelination may close the window on critical periods for skills like learning language

Question 21

Cognitive development

Answer 21

the ability to think, pay attention, reason, remember, learn, and solve problems

Question 22

The Philosophical Baby (2009)

Answer 22

8 month old infants understand the basics of statistics and probability
Become surprised by very unlikely events
Researchers put mostly white and a few red ping pong balls into box
Reached into box, pulled out few white balls and many red balls
Babies registered that this was very unlikely, looked longer at this situation
Call babies “intuitive statisticians”: without any training they know some events are very unlikely

Question 23

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Answer 23

Noticed that young children consistently gave wrong answers to certain questions
Was interested by the characteristics of children’s thinking that led to wrong answers
Young children consistently made types of mistakes that older children and adults did not
Theorized that young children’s cognitive processes are different from adult’s

Children actively constructed knowledge about their world
When children encounter a new event, they form a schema

Question 24

schema

Answer 24

mental representation, building blocks of cognitive development

EX: If mom points to picture of dog and says “Look at that doggie”, child will form a schema for “doggie” that looks similar to that picture

Question 25

Assimilation

Answer 25

Incorporating new information into already existing schemas
Ex: Kid points and says “doggie” when sees a horse. Has assimilated the new information about the animal into her existing schema for dogs

Question 26

2) Accommodation

Answer 26

Changing existing schemas to incorporate new information
Mom corrects her, says “thats a horse”
Kid creates new schema for horse, type of animal thats bigger than a dog, don’t see it walking down the street, doesn’t bark… etc
Kid has modify her existing schema about dogs and develop a new schema for horses to accommodate new information

Question 27

Piaget outlined 4 distinct phases of cognitive development from birth through adolescence:

Answer 27

sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational

Question 28

Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 28

0-2 years
Knowledge is through senses (tasting, seeing, smelling, touching, hearing)
During first 8-9 months, has no object permeance: ability to realize that objects still exist when they are not being sensed
“Out of sight, out of mind”- when an object is hidden from them, they will not look for it, even if they see someone hide it
Around 9 months infants will look to find hidden object because they remember objects exist even when they are not directly sensed

Question 29

object permeance

Answer 29

ability to realize that objects still exist when they are not being sensed