Development Flashcards
Nativism
children are born with specific abilities or those that they gain automatically with maturity
Empiricism
children MUST acquire certain skills with experience and practice
Domain-generality
all aspects of the mind are connected into a unified whole, development of one ability means the development of all others (like “g”)
Domain-specificity
development of one ability is independent of the development of others (like multiple intelligences)
Stage theories
children develop through a series of universal stages that must be completed in succession, different abilities come from different stages; Abrupt qualitative stages
Continuous theories
each child develops according to their own path and any ability can emerge at any time depending on the child’s experiences/genetics; Continuous quantitative change
Cross-sectional design
Developmental methodological design where many participants of different ages/cohorts are observed in parallel and compared to each other at one point in time
Cohort effects
a third variable problem where differences among younger and older participants may be attributed to changes in socialization, life events, nutrition, or experience rather than age
Longitudinal Design
Developmental methodological design where the same person/cohort is observed doing the same study multiple times over their lifetime and scores are compared to their past selves
Sequential design
Combines the cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches; Can compare different age groups to each other and to themselves across time
Instinctual behaviors
babies do tasks where we measure their natural/evolutionary behaviors
Looking preference
measuring where and for how long babies look to determine what they are thinking, since their perceptual systems develop early
Searching and foraging
capitalizing on children’s curiosity for foraging and searching for things once they crawl
Embedding into games
capitalizing on children’s gravitation towards playing by creating tasks that seem to be games
Habituation
decreased response to repeated stimulation but dishabituates when shown a new and different stimulus
Searching ability of babies
Toddlers remember up to 3 objects, children’s memory gets more precise with age, memory capacity and spatial development undergo dramatic changes
Children’s propensity to play games and figure out rules
When an adult instructs a child how to play with a toy, the child is likely to do just that and spends less time exploring new functions
Germinal stage
first 2 weeks of zygote, cells multiply rapidly into a blastocyst, which implants itself in the uterus
Embryonic stage
2-8 weeks; inner cells of blastocyst form the embryo and placenta forms where outer cells of blastocyst meet the uterus wall, which acts as a channel between mother and embryo
Teratogens
Chemical agents that impair or alter prenatal development usually by changing the expression of various genes
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
disorder caused by exposure to ethanol alcohol during the prenatal period through the placenta
Down Syndrome
neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a third copy of chromosome 21; Symptoms: physical changes and delays in motor skills, moderate intellectual disability; A domain-general disorder
Williams syndrome
caused by deletion of about 26 genes on chromosome 7; Symptoms: changes in facial appearance (nasal bridge, wide mouth), problems in IQ and visuospatial abilities; A domain-specific disorder as language and social skills remain unaffected
Puberty
period of sexual maturation during which males and females become capable of reproduction
Primary sex characteristics:
body structures like ovaries, testes, and external genitalia that make reproduction possible
Secondary sex characteristics
nonreproductive body structures like hips, torsos, voices, and body hair
Perceptual narrowing
Gradual fine-tuning of perceptual abilities through experience and exposure to the world
Own-species effect
young babies (<6 months) can distinguish human and non-human faces from one another (universal) but older infants (>9 months) can only differentiate human faces (attuned)
Own-race effect
babies struggle to differentiate faces of ethnicities they aren’t exposed to regularly
Imprinting
some birds follow the first moving stimuli they see 13-16 hours after hatching believing it’s their mother
Cataracts
visual deprivation in both eyes due to cataracts that block light from entering the retina (clouding of the lens) in the first 6 months, disrupts face processing, can be removed surgically
Reflexes
Very specific and unlearned motor actions triggered involuntarily by specific stimuli usually for self-preservation
Rooting reflex
touching a cheek gets the baby to turn their head toward it, important for eating/breastfeeding
Sucking reflex
automatic sucking when mouth is touched when exposed to the voice of their mother
Stepping reflex
alternating leg movements when foot touches the ground, entirely gone before babies learn how to walk
Grasping reflex
newborns grasp your finger when you place it in their palm
Cephalocaudal rule
tendency for growth and motor control to emerge from head first down to feet last
Proximodistal rule
tendency for growth and motor control to emerge from the center to the periphery
Posture-specific learning
babies don’t transfer knowledge about depth and danger from one stage to another (sitting to crawling), rather they have to relearn at every new posture or form of locomotion
Moving room task
infants change their weight distribution to compensate for the apparent movement created by a light in the room
Visual cliff task
Infants who have already been crawling show head movement and fear of the cliff while pre-crawling infants do not
Abstract Thought (theory of cognitive development)
Ability to represent, think about, mentally manipulate, and communicate about things that are not in our immediate perception and world around us
Sociocultural view of development (Vygotsky)
Child’s mind grows through interaction with the social environment
Erikson’s Eight Ages of Man
(1) Infancy: attachment to mother, lays foundation for later trust in others; trust vs. mistrust (2) Early childhood: gaining some basic control of self and environment; autonomy vs. shame (3) Preschool: becoming purposeful and directive; initiative vs. guilt (4) School age: developing social, physical, and school skills; competence vs. inferiority (5) Adolescence: developing a sense of identity; identity vs. role confusion (6) Early adulthood: establishing intimate bonds of love and friendship; intimacy vs. isolation (7) Middle age: fulfilling life goals, developing concerns that embrace future generations; productivity vs. stagnation (8) Later years: looking back and accepting the meaning of one’s life; integrity vs. despair
Sensorimotor Stage (infants and toddlers)
Complete absence of abstract thought, out of sight is out of mind
Object permanence
The knowledge that if something can’t be seen, it continues to exist
Schema
An organized, stable bit of knowledge about how the world works
Assimilation
integrating new information into an existing schema or using existing schema to interpret a new experience
Accommodation
changing or making new schemas to incorporate information from new experiences
Pre-operational “abstract” Stage (some toddlers and all preschoolers)
Children understand the permanence and abstraction of objects and events but still struggle to think about abstract concepts like minds of other people (egocentrism, lack a TOM)
Operations
Imaging how things like people or objects might be different than they are or imagining the consequences of some event without needing to see it happen
Conservation
The ability for children to logically reason that quantity/physical properties of an object is the same despite changes in the object’s appearance, linked to maturation of the frontal lobe (cognitive control)
Concrete Operational Stage (school children)
Can only apply mental operations to concrete, tangible objects or events; understand reversibility; can’t imagine the world being any other way that it really is (counterfactuals)
Formal operational stage (all adolescents)
Children become fully capable of logical and abstract thinking, and are no longer dominated by their own perceptions or intuitions about the world; Ability to conceptualize of hypothesis testing, deductive reasoning, and planning what to do and how to achieve it
Production/Comprehension Asymmetry
The fact that children begin understanding language much earlier than they start producing their own sentences
Phonemes
basic building blocks (e.g. sounds) out of which words are constructed
Syntax
grammatical rules we follow to construct meaning from words
Semantics
meaning that we derive from complete sentences
Pragmatics
“extra-linguistic” inferences we make from the manner in which we say sentences
Babbling
first production of speech-like phonemes which betters over the first 12 months of life
Morphology
English marks for tense or number by adding morphemes at the end of words (e.g. table/tables and clean/cleaned/cleaning) while other languages introduce entirely new words
Statistical learning
strategy used by infants and toddlers whereby they attend to which sounds co-occur the most and conclude that those must be words
Overgeneralization
common phenomena whereby children apply a syntactic rule to words they shouldn’t e.g. “I eated it”
Fast mapping
process where children map a word to a meaning after only a single exposure
Mutual exclusivity
children assume that every object has only a single label
Short-term costs of bilingualism
delayed production of speech, slower acquisition of syntax, reduced mutual exclusivity
Long-term benefits of bilingualism
dual language mastery, self-discipline, benefits for aging
Secure attachment
children show distress when they notice the caregiver leaving, then calm down when they notice the caregiver return
Avoidant attachment
children are minimally upset when the caregiver leaves and does not acknowledge when they return
Ambivalent/resistant/anxious attachment
children are very upset when the caregiver leaves and remain inconsolable/angry when they return
Disorganized attachment
children show no consistent pattern as parent leaves and returns
Authoritarian
low on responsiveness and highly demanding
Permissive
high on responsiveness and low on demanding scale
Authoritative
very responsive and very demanding
Disengaged
neither responsive nor demanding
Developmental theory of moral reasoning (Lawrence Kohlberg)
Children progress through morality stages where each is better and a more advanced form of moral reasoning; Begin with a focus on consequences (preconventional), then rules (conventional), then principles (post-conventional)
