Development Flashcards
What are the two central, unifying questions in the field of development psychology?
a. Stages vs gradual
b. Biology vs experience
What are the two key considerations for choice of research methods in development psychology?
- Does method work across age groups?
Example: Giving 6 month old a maths test - Does it allow comparisons across whole lifespan?
What are the three research methods in developmental psychology?
- Cross-sectional design: compares different ages at one point in time
- Longitudinal design: tracks one group of participants across time
- Sequential design: tracks multiple age groups across time. Example: comparing reading comprehension of 40 and 50 year olds and then doing it again in 10 years
What are the advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional research design?
Advantage: understanding which abilities develop at which point in lifespan.
Disadvantage: cohort effect: effect due to members of an age group sharing similar life experiences. For example, if you test a 20 year old and a 60 year old on memory, internet use might influence the results.
What are the advantages (1) and disadvantages (3) of longitudinal design?
Advantage:
Lets you be v v confident that people are changing across time
Disadvantages:
–Time and resources
–Attrition
–Single generation or cohort so results might not generalize
What are the advantages (1) and disadvantages (1) of sequential design?
Advantage:
High confidence changes are due to development and not cohort effects, so can generalize across cohorts.
Disadvantage:
Time consuming and costly, but sometimes less that longitudinal (track 2 groups for 10 years instead of 1 for 20).
When are the effects of research design disadvantages more pronounced?
Disadvantages of all 3 methods are more amplified the longer the segment in lifespan is that you want to study. Choice tends to depend on time and resources.
What are the two types of possible disruption to prenatal development?
- Recessive genes and chromosomal abnormalities
2. Exposure to teratogens
Give two examples of how babies aren’t blank slates at birth
- Reflexes. Example: rooting.
- Hearing. Example: Will suck more vigorously on a pacifier if hearing mother’s voice rather than another woman or their father.
List four things newborns do very early
- Look at stimulus
- Recognize faces
- Imitate faces
- Like novelty
What is habituation?
Decreased response to repeated stimulation
Disinhabituation
Increased response to something novel after period of habituation
What is the novelty-preference procedure? (3)
What is it and what does it show? (2)
Checkerboard
Infants <4 days old
React more when new image shown
Shows they:
1) Perceive and store simple visual patterns
2) Respond to changes in environment
What are the two general rules of motor control development?
Head to feet
Center of the body outward
What 2 cultural practices speed up and slow down motor development in infants?
Caribbean cultures that massage babies, stretch their limbs, or prop them up–infants start sitting and walking earlier in these cultures.
Placing babies on back to sleep seems to slow development but “tummy time” can cure that.
Assimilation
Using existing schema to interpret new experience
What are Piaget’s four stages of childhood development and at what age do they happen?
- Sensorimotor birth-2
- Preoperational 2-7
- Concrete operational 7-12
- Formal operationsl 12+
Name the 3 important maturational processes in the brain
- Neural proliferation
- Synaptic pruning
- Myelination
What is a violation-of-expectation test and what do they tell us? (4)
Babies stare longer when things break physical laws like object permanence.
Understand earlier than Piaget thought.
Piaget study requires prefrontal cortex work which develops later.
Kids that pass Piaget’s test prefrontal cortex more activated.
What are the fastest areas of the brain to develop?
The ones that process sensory info, like occipital lobe. Hmm!
What 3 things does the frontal lobe do?
Rational planning
Working memory
Decision making
What emotional shit can kids under 1 do? (2)
Decode simple facial expressions
Some ability to predict others’ behaviour and infer intentions.
Social referencing
Relying on facial expression of caregiver to decide how to react
What’s the study that shows infants can infer intentions?
They’ll focus longer on hand going for new toy vs hand going in new direction.
Imprinting
Simple attachment mechanism–once duckling can walk (~12 hours post-hatching), attaches to first moving stimulus it sees
Describe Harlow’s theory of contact comfort.
Humans and monkeys get comfort from things like a hug or a soft blanket.
Rhesus monkeys went to weird robot with bottle for food but overwhelmingly preferred to cling to cloth robot.
What does a secure base let kids do? (3 + 1)
Explore
Investigate
Learn
While knowing that they can always return.
What happens with insecure/avoidant kids in strange situation test (2)
HR increases when mother leaves + stays high when she returns
Don’t show signs of distress
What two aspects of the infant affect how their attachment style develops?
- Expectations for caregiver
- Temperament
Training parents of irritable babies to be more responsive to their needs makes the babies less likely to develop insecure attachment.
Give 3 skills secure attachment helps kids with and 2 issues it helps them avoid.
Social appeal
Social skills
Language
Behavioural problems
Anxiety disorders
Weird ball study on attachment
Big ball and little ball. Big ball moves away from little ball and ball makes crying sound.
Big ball moves further away–securely attached kids look longer than insecure.
Big ball goes back to small ball–insecurely attached kids look longer than secure.
What is symbolic representation? (1)
Thinking about an object as two things at once.
Example: Kids show learning this by starting to play pretend!
The conservation task. What did Piaget say it means? What does it actually mean?
Describe.
Piaget said it requires 2 things:
1) Relate
2) Imagine
Frontal lobe to override automatic “height = volume” heuristic.
Sorting cards study
Kids are asked to sort red and blue bunnies and red and blue boats. First asked to sort by colour, then by shape.
When asked to sort by shape they understand the new rule and can describe it, but they sort by colour for a bit longer before doing it by shape. Shows difficulty overriding heuristics.
What is the false belief test?
At what age can kids pass it?
- Under 3, false belief
- 4-5, consistently correct
- look at right location 90% of time just before 3
Egocentrism
Difficulty imagining world from others’ PoV
What is the “food test” for theory of mind?
Adult makes yuck face when eating food 1 and broad smile when eating food 2.
Adult then asks 18 month old to give them a food. Kid gives adult food 2, even if kid prefers food 1.
Shows they understand adult is different from them.
What is Vygotsky’s sociocultural view?
“Little apprentices”
Learn through interaction with others who have knowledge
Scaffolding (3)
Promote cognitive development
Actively challenge and support child to do things beyond their current capabilities, but that they’d be able to do with considerable help
Challenged but not overwhelmed
How do parents help kids develop autobiographical memory? (3)
Parent-child convos about life events
Hear questions, sequence, level of detail
Learn what’s worth reporting and what to pay attention to