developmental Flashcards
quantitative change
gradual, more of the same (more quantity) e.g walking slow vs walking fast
qualitative change
abrupt, something different (different quality) e.g walking vs running
u-shaped change
getting worse before getting better (temporailiry incorrect approach)
upright u-shaped change is unusual and reflects a declin in some function that re-emerges
a possible subset of qualitative change
atypical development
delay and divergence
heritability
proportion of variation in a trait explained by genetic factors
environmentality
proportion of variation in a trait explained by environmental factors
kovas et al, 2007
heritability estimates will necessarily increase with decreased environmental
variation
G-E interactions
the impact of a gene might depend on the environment
does plato believe in nature or nurture?
nature
does john locke believe in nature or nurture?
nurture (tabula rasa)
piaget’s stance on acquiring knowledge
constructivism- the child constructs theur own reality
the child is a little scientist
there is an interaction between the child and the environment
piaget’s stages
sensorimotor, pre-operational, concetrete operations and formal operational
age and feature of sensorimotor stage
0-2
knowledge dependent on action, movement and senses
age and feature of pre-operational stage
2-6
symbolic thought and representation
egocentrism
age and feature of concrete operational stage
6-11
logical mental representation
tied to experience (physical experience)
age and feature of formal operational
11+
abstract logical reasoning
how does a child construct their reality according to piaget?
begins in a state of adualism (self and world undiffrenriated)
innate reflex actions prompt them to interact with the environment
this tells them what is self-generated and what is world-generated
how do schemas evolve according to piaget?
innate processes of assimilation and accomodation
assimilation
bringing in new information from the environment that fits a schema
accomodation
adjusting a schema to fit information from the environment
what is a key feature sensorimotor substage 2 (+age)?
lack of object permanance so child fails to follow an object out of the visual field
2-4 months
what is a key feature sensorimotor substage 3 (+age)?
children fail to search for an occulded object
4-8 months
what is a key feature sensorimotor substage 4 (+age)?
children will search for an occluded object but make the A-not-B error
8-12 months
what is the A-not-B error?
an infant will search for an object in its original hiding place (A) even after seeing it moved to a new location (B)
what is a key feature sensorimotor substage 6 (+age)?
schemas become freed from action- get mental representation- so child can act on thoughts (symbolic) as well as objects
18-24 months
what is egocentrism?
a child’s thinking is self-centred so they have difficuly understanding life from any other persepctive other that its own
how long does egocentrism last in the pre-operational stage?
the whole stage
who conducted the 3 mountains experiment to test egocentrism?
piaget and inhelder (1956)
what is conservation?
realising that properties of objects- mass, volume, number etc- remain the same despite changes in the form of objects
when do children develop the ability to conserve?
once leaving the pre-operational stage as they realise the logical necessity for conservation
what are the three mental operations according to piaget?
identity, compensation and reversibility
who showed evidence of object permanence?
hood and willatts (1986)
what did hood and willatts find about object permanence?
5 month-olds shown an object to left/right
lights go out
significantly reaches to correct side
what is violation of expectancy?
infants will show surprise when witnessing an impossible event
baillargeon et al, 1985 findings of VOE
4 month olds stared longer at the impossible evetn (drawbridge not being impeded by an unseen box) than possible event (drawbridge stopped by box) suggesting they noted something was amiss
mcgarrigle and donaldson (1974) findings of conservation
80 4-6 year olds
62% children in the naughty teddy condition passed the conservation task (said both rows had same) compared to 16% in the control
who proposed the overlapping waves model to performance? how does this contrast piaget?
siegler (1996)
piaget saw performance as a staircase
siegler’s 1995 number conservation
children use multiple strategies but signficantly improve on the task if they are asked to explain the experimenter’s reasoning
performance improves when child has to consider another perspective
what siegler’s microgenetic approach?
rather than studying development as before and after it is better to study change in real time as development is:
- piecemental
- multiple strategies
- not all or nothing but recursive
what is vygotsky’s model?
the zone of proximal development is defined as the difference between a child’s actual development as determined by problem solving and the childs potential development as determine through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (contextualse problem and appreciate adult SI)
how do wood and middleton (1975) support vygotsky?
preschoolers observe constructing 3D wooden puzzles
ounger children benefited more from showing compared to the older children
Whereas the opposite for true for verbal instruction
mothers who shifted flexibility and style of intervention (scaffolding) produced best performance
what is a domain general approach?
development of general mechanisms that apply across all problems (e.g memory and attention)
what is a domain-specific approach?
development of specific mechanisms are specialised with dedicated processing (e.g language and core knowledge)
according to domain specificity, what is development prompted by?
evolution
for specification, things need to be hard-wired and thus innate
what is the link between neuroscience and executive control?
increasing maturation of cortical areas (especially pre-frontal cortices) may enable increasing executive control (such as working memory and planning)
why do older children make A-not-B errors?
if there is an increasing delay inserted between hiding and search as it increases the load on working memory and interference
what are the effects of frontal lesions on search performance?
lesions to the pre-frontal cortex disrupt performance on a WM search task (similar to ANB) but not an associative memory task (diamond 1991)
what irrelevent information do piagetian tasks require ignoring?
- search requires ignoring previous location (&
inhibiting prepotent responses) - perspective taking requires ignoring egocentric
view - conservation tasks require ignoring the
appearance following the transformation
what is the difference between sensation and pereception?
sensory input is often ambiguous or incomplete however perception organises sensory input into representations that the brain can use
what are simple sensorimotor systems in the brain supported by?
subcortical structures that are relaitively mature at birth
what are higher order processes supported by?
coritcal systems that mature postnatally
what technique did fantz develop which can be used to study discrimination?
habitutaion
what is the average viusal acuity or adults and children?
30cyc/deg for adults and 1cyc/deg for children
what is visual acuity?
the level of finest visual detail that can be perceived- baby’s visual acuity would qualify them as being legally blind
what is visual scanning?
the ability to selectively move eyes around the environment
what does an increase in visual scanning patterns demonstrate?
increasing cortical control
what taste preferences do children have?
sweetness as the foetus swallows amniotic fluids in the womb
learn taste preference from mothers (carrot jucie study)
what smell preferences do children have?
prefer smell of own mother (lactation study)
how do children respond to adult physical contact?
children thrive with contact which is why they are constantly cradled
premature babies gain significant weight (30-40%) following daily massage
what is the possible explanation as to why physical stimulation causes growth?
touch activates the release of hormones in the brain that regulate metabolism and growth (e.g growth hormones)
when do children reach adult levels of sound detection?
5-8 years old
what are mental representations in the context of perception?
patterns of neuronal activity that initially refer to aspects of the external world
what are the levels of processing and representation in the brain?
stimulus
sesnory representation
perceptual process
perceptual representation
cognition
what is the evidence for infants having perceptual constancy?
slater et al (1991)- following habituation of different angles, the newborn was presented with two new test stimuli and looked longer at the angle they hadn’t seen before
what do subjective contours rely on?
cortical mechanisms that develop postnantally
what is cross-modal perception?
the capacity to detect correspondences of different features in the world from different sensory modalities, e.g if you see something fall (visual) you expect to hear a sound (auditory)
what evidence is there for infants having cross-modal perception?
spelke (1976) infants prefer a film of a bouncing ball when the audio is synchronised from at least 4 months
what motor reflex are infants born with?
rooting reflex (move mouth to something that touches cheek)
sucking reflex
what is stereopsis?
because we have two eyes the visual system receives two slightly different images of the world so can produce perception of depth
this relies on cortical mechanisms
what does the visual cliff demonstrate?
infants can detect depth using monocular cues
relationship between action, perception and cognition
- early crawlers avoided heights earlier
- precrawlers given walkers avoided heights as well
- infants who wore casts were delayed in fear of heights
- early crawler and precrawlers given walkers performed
significantly better on spatial search tasks.
what did johnson and morton (1991) argue?
humans are born with a configured mechanism that makes newborns orient to faces in order to learn about them
what is conspec?
a system that orients the infant towards face-like structure and is supported by subcortical brain mechanisms, present at birth (orientating)
what is conlearn?
a system largrely supported by maturing cortical brain mechanisms that learns about specific faces (learning faces)
what are 6 features of early social interaction?
babyness, imitation, contingency, gaze following, pointing and joint attention
what is babyness?
lorenz argued we have a preference for the toung who have a relatively large eyes to head ratio
how does babyness change as a child reeaches puberty?
pre-pubescent children
prefer pictures of mature animals of different species.
at puberty they switch
perference to the young of
the species.
what is the cooperative eye hypothesis?
suggests that the eyes distinctive visible characteristics eveolved to make it easier for humans to follow anothers gaze while communicating
what does early social synchronisation depend on?
temporal organisation and adult sensitivity
what is joint attention?
the capacity to coordinate the social interaction with attention direction towards objects of mutual interest
example of joint attention
following each other’s gaze
what highlights a childs first attempt as social interacting?
social smiling (smiles directed towards people)
what is contingent behaviour?
synchronised responding from an adult
what factor can impact contingent behaviour?
mothers with post-natal depression as they are too flat or overly exaggerated
what is a dydadic relationship?
where the focus of interest is between two individuals (e.g mother and infant staring at one another with a mutual gaze)
what is a triadic relationship?
where attention is directed between two individuals and a third potential source, we can signal to the other individual that there is something worth looking at by shifting gaze
at what age do children start developing triadic relationships?
6 months (supported by piaget)
when does social smiling emerge?
2-3 months and this is probably reflexive as blind babies also smile at this age
what is social reciprocity?
the ability to engage in social interactions positively
what is the still-face effect?
three month olds readily reciprocate social interactions and become distressed when adults ignore or terminate interactions
how do you prove the joint attention paradigm?
engage infants attention and then turn to look as if there is something that has caught
your interest. infants will turn to look in the same direction if they have joint attention
emerges reliably within 9 monhs and becomes increasingly sophisticated.
stages of joint attention-redirecting gaze
6 months: infants turn to the correct side of the room but do not
identify which of two targets is correct. also no targets behind.
12 months: infants turn to the correct target but fail to look to targets
behind: begin to understand pointing
18 months: infants will turn to look behind themselves
what is protoimperative pointing?
the point is to direct anothers attention to obtain a particular goal
(goal-orientated)
what is protodeclarative pointing?
to direct anothers attention to an object or event of interest
interpreting pointing
joint attention condition –back and forth between
infant and puppet
face condition – adult focuses exclusively on infant
event condition – adult focuses exclusively on puppet
ignore condition – adult ignores puppet & infant
overall, pointing more prevalent during joint attention (75%)
on other conditions, more agitated pointing
what evidence is there for language being acquired prenatally?
mehler et al (1988)
40 4-day-olds babies of french speakers
habituate to russian, and then hear second voice speaking either russian or french
at what age do children begin to use two-word phrases?
18-24 months
what are the potential sub-components of language?
phonology- speech sounds
vocabulary- word (lexical) knowledge
syntax- (formal) grammar
pragmatics/discourse- language in a social context
according to levelt (1989) the act of speech involved what three processes?
conceptualisation
formulation
articulation
what is categorical perception in language?
ability to hear immediate sounds between two sounds (e.g p and b)
what are the word learning biases?
mutual exclusivity
whole object
basic level
shape
taxonomic
williams syndrome
retain ability to use lnaguage but have cognitive deficits
developmental language disorder
cannot use language but do not have intellectual impairments
what is theory of mind?
theory of mind is typically defined as the ability to understand the thoughts, beliefs, desires, and emotions of other people which may be different to ones own
autistic children do not have theory of mind
sally anne task
sally takes a marble and hides it in her basket
she then “leaves” the room
while she is away, Anne takes the marble out of sally’s basket and puts it in her own box
sally is then reintroduced and the child is asked the key question, “where will sally look for her marble?
those without TOM would say its her anne’s basket
harlow
if isolated monkeys were reintroduced to
other monkeys before 6 months, they were
fully rehabilitated
monkeys who spent the sensitive period in
isolation failed to learn the necessary social
skills to integrate with others and the skills
necessary for raising they own young
romanian orphan study
despite receiving adequate nourishment and healthcare, infants still developed psychological problems because of the lack of social interaction
improvements in physical, cognitive and social development followed a similar pattern: children adopted before the age of six months showed the greatest recovery, but those adopted after the age of six months remained increasingly delayed despite the nurturing environments provided by their adoptive familie
bowlby 44 thieves
study of ‘44 juvenile thieves’ - many had a period of separation from mother during early childhood
(bowlby, 1944)
absence of maternal relationship =>
abnormal development
lorenz
imprinting- innate biological mechanism where newly hatched chicks follow the first animal they see
bowlby theory of attachment
- bowlby argued it was a primary drive
- an evolutionary primarily designed to maintain an
optimal distance between infant and mother - homeostatic mechanism; self-regulating for both
mothers & infants
bowlby stages of atatchment
stage I (0-2 mths): pre-attachment
stage II (2-7 mths): attachment formation (stranger anxiety)
stage III (7 mths -2 yrs): clear-cut attachment (separation anxiety)
stage IV (2 yrs - on): decline in attachment
attachment types
insecure avoidant
secure
insecure resistant/ambivalent
disorganised
cultural variations in attachment
german mothers foster independence
japanese mothers traditionally stay at home with child, so
children tend to show less exploratory behaviour in the strange situation
temperament
reactivity to novelty as evidence by phsyiological measures, affect and behvaiour
behvaiour inhibition- the tendency towards shyness and fear
bhevaioural inhibition at 4 months predicts attachment at 21 months
emotional regulation (self-control) and temperament
self-control is related to the ability to suppress or inhibit negative emotions
young children who lack executive functions may fail to regulate self-control
children who can delay gratification…
achieved better academic performancem exhibited fewer behavioural problems and had better social skills
goodness of fit
extent to which environment matches up to child’s
temperament
matching up of parent behaviour with child
temperament
mothers who are better at reading infant behaviour foster secure attachment
mothers trained in parenting produce more securely
attached infants
kiley hamlin morality studies
infant’s interpret actions as intentional from as early as 6 months
infant’s are sensitive attempts to help even when they fail
infant’s attribute an enduring moral stance “a good person”
infant’s distinguish accidental outcomes from those that are intended
sympathy-based v strategic prosociality
sympathy-based prosociality occurs when goal is to benefit the recipient
strategic pro-sociality occurs when goal is to enhance reputation
early prosocial behaviour is selective but not strategic
early prosocial behaviour is sympathy based
children engage in prosocial bhevaiour from around 14-18 months
at 2, they will comfort those in distress and start charing
they show some slecetivity early on but become considerably discriminating with age
lateral prosocial behaviour is strategy based
after 5, sharing is directed at friends, had perviosuly shared with the child or had been seen sharing with others, in-group members
origins of us vs them
infant chooses mittens, puppet chooses mittens, infant chooses puppets
favouritism vs prejudice
initially children form in-group biases - favouritism
rather than out-group hostility - prejudice
strategic sharing
5-year-olds were only generous when the recipient was aware of the donation options
natural vs manufactured
3 year olds reason that manufactured objects are property that is owned
labour and ownership
john locke argued that ownership is dervived by labour
3 year olds apply this
cultural differences in sharing
children from both traditionally individualistic (US) and collective societies (india) will
reduce sharing if modelled by an adult but only indian children increase generosity when modelled (reputation is more important)
hazda tribe
ownership is collective
concept of demand sharing
aggression
aggression shows greater continuity across childhood than any other facet of social development
temperament and self-control are likely to combine with role models & environment
bobo doll study
children are selective:
only copy specific aggressive acts
do not copy if they observe that the adult is punished -vicarious
punishment
more likely to copy older, more competent adults
tend to copy fathers but less so mothers
piaget moral development
piaget suggested moral reasoning is a skill to develop
appears to develop across childhood and into adulthood over
three stages:
stage 1: shift from realism to relativism
(rules are inviolable truths: black & white)
stage 2: shift from prescriptions to principles (rules are guidelines that can be flexible)
stage 3: shift from consequences to intentions
(was it intentional or accidental? “mens rea” - criminal intent)
kohlberg and moral reasoning
preconventional stage (children)- what will happen to me?
conventional stage (adolescents)
– what do others normally do? (everyone should obey the law)
postconventional stage (some adults)
– how does it fit with my values? (it is acceptable to do anything to
save a life)
emphais on punishment to emphasis on social rules and then to an emphasis on ethical principles
