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BSc Psychology > Developmental Psychology > Flashcards

Developmental Psychology Flashcards

1
Q

What do we gain by taking a developmental perspective?

A
  • important knowledge of: emergence, manifestation and consistency of change across the life span
  • better understanding of when, how and why change occurs
  • helps us understand normative/non-normative development
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2
Q

What id developmental psychology?

A
  • description, explanation and prediction of age-related changes in behaviour, thinking, emotions and social relationships
  • identification of variables that influence development and how they work together to shape an individual’s life
  • multi-disciplinary: based in psych but also draws on genetics, neuro, education, sociology and anthropology
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3
Q

How do we characterise development?

A
  • continuity/ discontinuity in development
  • stability/ instability in development
    (at group level and at individual level)
  • quantitative/ qualitative
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4
Q

What factors explain development?

A
  • nature-nurture debate

- multi-systems model of development

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5
Q

What are behaviour genetics?

A

study of how variation in behaviour can be explained by separating environmental and genetic influences

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6
Q

What are epigenetics?

A

the idea that experience can determine the turning on and off of genes

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7
Q

What are the levels of the multi-systems model of development?

A
  • environment (physical, social, cultural)
  • behaviour
  • neural activity
  • genetic activity
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8
Q

Is development a holistic process?

A

Yes

Change in one domain will affect change in the other domains

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9
Q

Describe the sensitive periods in development?

A

There are sensitive periods in development where the organisation of brain structure and function is particularly sensitive to environmental input

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10
Q

Four basic goals for understanding development

A
  • describe
  • explain
  • predict
  • influence
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11
Q

What are the experimental designs used to explore change?

A
  • cross sectional designs
  • longitudinal designs
  • sequential (cohort) designs
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12
Q

What are cross-sectional designs?

A

Test different age groups simultaneously

  • E.g: Fenson et al (1994): asked parents of toddlers to describe longest sentence used by their child, 1130 ps between 16 and 30 months
  • Results: rapid growth of number of words in a sentence during this age period
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13
Q

Advantages of cross sectional designs

A
  • quick and economical

- demonstrate age differences and indicate developmental trend

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14
Q

Disadvantages of cross sectional designs

A
  • age trends may reflect extraneous differences between cohorts (rather than developmental change)
  • no data on the development of individuals, therefore provide no info about determinants of change
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15
Q

What are longitudinal designs?

A
  • measure individuals at different time points
  • allows some measurement of individual change
  • allows an exploration of the dynamic nature of change
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16
Q

Five goals of longitudinal designs

A
  • consider change in individuals
  • look at change and differences between individuals
  • consider factors that drive change
  • look at causes of change
  • investigate cause of change
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17
Q

Advantages of longitudinal designs

A
  • explores individual change over time
  • explores patterns of continuity and discontinuity
  • same cohort
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18
Q

Disadvantages of longitudinal designs

A
  • costly and time consuming
  • requires large data sets
  • multiple (repeated) testing
  • attrition
  • equivalence of methods over time
  • changing qs
  • cohort effects
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19
Q

What is a cohort?

A

a group of people with a shared charactersitic

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20
Q

What is attrition?

A

loss of study participants over time

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21
Q

What are microgenetic measures?

A
  • examine changes as they occur
  • small samples but dense data collection
  • provides valuable info about changes as they occur
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22
Q

What are sequential (cohort) designs?

A

combines across sectional and longitudinal designs to examine age related change across multiple cohorts

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23
Q

Advantages of sequential design

A
  • discriminates true development from cohort effects
  • indicates whether developmental changes experienced by one cohort are similar to those experienced by other cohorts
  • often less costly and time consuming than longitudinal approach
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24
Q

Disadvantages of sequential design

A
  • still more costly and time consuming than cross- sectional approach
  • attrition and biases
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25
Q

What are the challenges for developmental research?

A
  • developing measures that are reliable and valid
  • representative samples
  • reporting
  • objective measurements (brain function)
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26
Q

Methodologies used in developmental psychology

A
  • observational studies (video-recording- data rich but time consuming)
  • eye movement methodology (attention-cognition: pupil size)
  • imaging- fMRI- blood flow and neural activity (difficult to use with children)
  • EEG and ERP
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27
Q

What is a genotype?

A

Genetic blueprint- genes you inherit from your parents

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28
Q

What is a phenotype?

A

Observable characteristics

- influenced by genes, environment and their interaction

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29
Q

What is a homozygous pair?

A

When the two sets of instructions are the same at any given locus

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30
Q

What is a heterozygous pair?

A

When the two sets of instructions are different at any given locus

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31
Q

What is the dominant-recessive pattern?

A
  • dominant genes always express their characteristics
  • both recessive genes must be present to express their characteristics
  • however, genes vary in expressivity
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32
Q

Examples of dominant genes

A
  • freckles
  • Rh positive blood
  • type A and B blood
  • dark hair
  • curly hair
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33
Q

Examples of recessive genes

A
  • flat feet
  • thin lips
  • Rh negative blood
  • type O blood
  • red hair
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34
Q

What are polygenetic traits?

A

Traits that require the interaction of several genes

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35
Q

Examples of polygenetic traits?

A
  • height
  • body type
  • eye colour
  • skin colour
  • personality
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36
Q

What are the 3 stages of prenatal development?

A

1) Germinal stage
2) Embryonic stage
3) Foetal stage

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37
Q

What is the germinal stage? (prenatal development)

A
  • the zygote
  • occurs from conception to implantation (around 2 weeks)
  • blastocyst: division into 2 sections: section that will become baby and section that will form into various structures that support development
  • structures: placenta, umbilical cord, yolk sac, aminion
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38
Q

What is the embryonic stage? (prenatal development)

A
  • begins when implantation is complete
  • forms foundations of all body organs
  • all major organs and systems begin to develop
  • organogenesis occurs
  • heartbeat at 4 weeks
  • rapid development
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39
Q

What is organogenesis?

A

Process of organs developing

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40
Q

What is the foetal stage? (prenatal development)

A
  • 9- 38 weeks
  • basic structures are refined and grow to final form
  • week 12: sex can be determined
  • viability possible by week 22/23
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41
Q

What is viability?

A

When a foetus can be born and survive unattached from the mother

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42
Q

Describe the prenatal development of the brain

A
  • first month: neural tube forms
  • 6th month: most of the brain’s neurons are in place and synaptogenesis begins (associated with new behavioural capacities)
  • last trimester: cerebral cortex enlarges
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43
Q

What is the correlation between fetal behaviour and brain development?

A

the development of the brain is correlated with movement in the womb and different behaviours that the fetus can engage in

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44
Q

Describe the brain development of fetus

A
  • different brajn regions mature at different times (regions associated with higher coginitve function develop later)
  • hippocampus, amygdala and corpus callosum undergo rapid growth during first 3.5 years of life
  • during these early years, the brain may be sensitive to experiences
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45
Q

What is the correlation between brain weight and age?

A
  • there is an increase of the brain’s weight with age
  • there is a slight decline in brain weight as people age
  • male brain weighs more
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46
Q

Talk about foetal development- behavioural organisation I

A
  • foetal movements (from week 8 onwards, felt by mother at 18-20 weeks)
  • behaviour becomes progressively more organised with gestational age (by 34 weeks- distinct patterns of rest and activity)
  • 20%-30% of time spent in quiet, motionless sleep-like state
  • rest of time in ‘active sleep’
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47
Q

Talk about foetal development- beahvioural organisation II

A
  • by 38 weeks, less time in ‘active-sleep’
  • more inhibitory pathways
  • activity and rest periods alternate cyclically
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48
Q

Foetal behaviour and learning

A
  • foetal responses to sounds: changes in heart rate, head turns, movements
  • foetal learning: distinguish between familiar and novel stimuli
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49
Q

What are prenatal risks?

A
  • prenatal growth is strongly predetermined
  • abnormalities in prenatal development result from: genetic causes, smoking, alchohol, drugs, environmental toxins, maternal disease, maternal diet, age, emotional state, poverty
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50
Q

Genetic disprders in prenatal development

A
  • autosomal disorders: caused by dominant genes, single abnormal gene on one of the first 22 chromosomes
    OR
    caused by recessive genes, mutation on one of the first 22 chromosomes- both genes in a pair must be abnormal to cause the disease
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51
Q

Examples of genetic disorders caused by dominant genes

A
  • huntington’s disease
  • Sz
  • migraine headaches
  • extra fingers
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52
Q

Examples of genetic disorders caused by recessive genes

A
  • phenylketonuria (PKU)
  • sickle- cell disease
  • tay-sachs disease
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53
Q

What are teratogenic effects?

A

Things that we know impact development

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54
Q

Examples of teratogenic effects

A
  • smoking- affects birth weight
  • alchohol consumption- leads to foetal alchohol syndrome (small size, small brain, physical abnormalities)
  • drug abuse- leads to poor blood flow to placenta
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55
Q

Risks of low birth weight babies

A
  • increased risks for impairment (perceptual, attentional, motor, intellectual, behavioural)
  • can range from gross abnormalities to minor abnormalities
  • prematurity
  • respiratory difficulties
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56
Q

How do vunlerable children develop resilience?

A
  • brain plasticity

- environmental characteristics: family good with caregiving skills, income and reslurces, community

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57
Q

What is sensation?

A

The acquisition of info through the sensory organs and the transmission of that infro to the brain
- seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling

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58
Q

What is perception?

A

Brain organises the info from the senses

- the attribution to sensations

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59
Q

Familiar voices and newborns

A

Newborns recognise their mother’s voice and by 1 month of age they can discriminate between syllables such as BA and PA

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60
Q

Visual ability of a newborn

A
  • visual ability is the least developed of the senses
  • newborns respond to light and track moving objects with their eyes
  • visual acuity not same as in adults
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61
Q

What is visual acuity?

A

Sharpness of vision

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62
Q

Visual development of newborn

A
  • initial poor control over the eyes (visual accommodation)- focus both eyes on same spot
  • show preference for mother’s face
  • demonstrate size and shape constancy
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63
Q

Describe the developmental progression of visual tracking

A
  • from jerky to smooth tracking

- from scanning parts of an object to scanning across the whole object

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64
Q

Describe the perceptual skills of an infant

A

First 2 months

  • first focus on where objects are in the world
  • scan light/dark contrasts to search the edge of objects
  • look at motion

2-3 months:

  • shift to what an object is
  • larger degree of detail noticeable
  • pay attention to patterns
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65
Q

Ways of studying infant perception

A

Visual preference method

Habituation/ dishabituation

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66
Q

What is visual preference method as a way of understanding infant perception?

A
  • researchers measure how long a baby looks a 2 pics
  • presentation of two stimuli at the same time
  • does infant look at one more than the other?
  • preference implies discrimination
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67
Q

What is habituation as a way of studying infant perception?

A
  • presenting the same pic over and over until baby stops looking (habituates)
  • present second stimulus- does infant show renewed interest?
  • habituation implies visual memory
  • infants should look longer at novel stimulus
68
Q

Shape perception in infants

A

Infants percieve shapes as wholes rather than angular parts

69
Q

Object unity in infants

A

By 4 months, infants percieve object as a whole, newborns do not

70
Q

Describe ages and object unity and trajectory continuity

A
  • 6 months: percieve trajectory continuity
  • 4 months: only when occluder is small/narrow or over a short time
  • 2 months: percieve discontinous trajectory
71
Q

Infants and subjective contours

A

By 3-4 months, infants can see subjective contours

72
Q

Infants and pattern perception

A
  • 2 day old infants discriminate between patterned and unpatterned shapes
  • < 1 week old infants show preference for shape
  • 2 month old infants prefer more complex pattern whereas 1 month old prefer less complex pattern- suggets that improved acuity results in greater interest in more complex patterns
73
Q

Infants and face perception

A
  • face perception is one of the most important stimuli in infant’s world
  • attention to faces would be advantageous for survival and learning
74
Q

What mechanism may account for face preference?

A
  • faces display charactersitcis that are appealing: high contrast, ‘top-heavy’, move
  • infanrs are born with an ‘innate face- detecting’ brain mechanism that directs their attention specifically toward face-like configurations
75
Q

Describe the auditory perception in infants

A

Begins to develop before birth:

  • foetal reactions to sound
  • from 20 weeks gestation
  • can discriminate between male and female voices

Newborns show preference for mother’s voice:

  • lack of preference for father’s voice
  • preference of mother’s voice as it sounds in uterus
76
Q

Infant ages and auditory perception

A

Newborns:

  • prefer to hear own language over foreign
  • prefer to hear familiar story over new

1 month:
- distinguish “ba” and “pa” sounds

6 months:

  • can discriminate two syllable words
  • respond to syllable hidden inside a string

Up to 6 months:
- discriminate all sound contrasts that appear in any language

77
Q

Describe other sense of infants

A

Less research on smell and taste:

  • newborns respond differently to basic tastes (sweet, sour, bitter)
  • 1 week olds distinguish body odour of their mothers from that of a stranger

Touch and motion:

  • well developed
  • most sophisticated of all senses at birth
  • fine-tuning over the course of first year
78
Q

What is intersensory integration?

A

How early can an infant integrate sensory information across more than one modality to percieve it as one event? (e.g matching mouth movements to sounds)

79
Q

What is cross-modal (intermodal) transfer?

A

How early can an infant learn something via one sense and transfer that info to another sense? (e.g recognising a toy by toych although it was never felt before but only seen)

80
Q

Examples of intersensory integration

A
  • 4 month olds connect sound rhythms with movement
  • 5 month olds connect sound and sight in motion (moving train matched with moving sound)
  • 4-5 months show preference for a face mouthing vowel
81
Q

What did John Bowlby contribute about attachment?

A

Specifically wanted to observe and understand the responses of children when they’re separated from their mothers

82
Q

Describe Bowlby’s “44 thieves” study

A
  • observed and compared 44 youths and 44 juvenile thieves

- delinquent thieves were more likely to of experienced separation from their mother in the first 5 years of their lives

83
Q

Describe Harlow’s “rhesus monkeys” study

A
  • one cloth mother (didn’t provide food)
  • one wired mother (provided food)
  • rhesus monkeys stayed with cloth mother and only went to wire mother for feeding
  • demonstrated overwhelming importance of soft body contact for their development
84
Q

What is attachment?

A
  • a selective, enduring, affective tie of infant to their caregiver based on the infant’s need for protection, comfort and nurturance
85
Q

Describe proximity-promoting behaviours

A
  • infants are born with proximity-promoting behaviours e.g crying, calling, clinging
  • with experience, infants develop behavioural strategies which reflect infants’ internalised ways of organising their attachments to gain proximity
86
Q

What is healthy development dependent of?

A
  • healthy development dependent on interplay between the attachment behavioural system and exploration system:
    1) felt threat- attachment behaviours to achieve proximity and regulate stress
    2) felt security- exploration behaviours (learn about world)
87
Q

Describe the steps to attachment and development

A

1) Experiences of care with primary attachment figures
2) Internal working models of self, other and relationship
3) Relating to others/ psycho-social functioning

88
Q

What is the development of attachment (Bowlby, 1969)?

A

Phase 1: non-focused orienting
Phase 2: focus on one or more figures
Phase 3: secure base behaviour

89
Q

What is attachment like beyond infancy?

A
  • goal- corrected partnership
  • language, cognitive advances (e.g theory of mind) enable child to weigh both parents and his or her own goals
  • attachment needs can increasingly be negotiated collaboratively between parent and child
90
Q

Describe Ainsworth’s strange situation

A
  • laboratory
  • assesses 12-24 months
  • observation of infant behaviours during a sequence of episodes in which parent and child are together, separated and reunited
91
Q

What does an infant do in a well-functioning attachment relationship?

A
  • when together: use mother as a base to explore form
  • when separated: be stressed by absence of mother
  • upon reunion: be effectively comforted by mother
92
Q

What are the different attatchment styles?

A
  • secure
  • insecure-avoidant
  • insecure-resistant
  • disorganised
93
Q

What is a disorganised attachment style?

A
  • reflects a breakdown
  • disruption in the co-ordination of regulation in behaviour
  • behaviour displays fear, misdirected, jerky movements
94
Q

How to measure attachment beyond the strange situation?

A

Representational measures of attachment:

  • looking at internal models
  • looking at cognitive representations of attachment
95
Q

Attachment in adulthood

A
  • in adolescence and adulthood, still attached to parents but mental proximity is more important than physical proximity
  • quality of adult parental attachment is assessed using Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
96
Q

Stability on attachment

A
  • estimates of stability of attachment overtime suggest modest associations
  • estimates are moderate by risk status: stability is found to be weaker in ‘at risk’ samples than in ‘low-risk’ samples
97
Q

What are the origins of variations in attachment study?

A
  • variations in caregiver’s behaviours is dependant on the development of attachment
  • secure: mother is responsive
  • low levels of responsiveness is associated with insecure attachment: avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised
98
Q

What predicts secure attachment?

A
  • parental factors: prompt, consistent and appropriate responding (ability to read children’s cues)
  • child factors: temperament (are they more easy-going or irritable), genetic differences
99
Q

What is learning?

A

A fairly permanent change in behaviour due to past experience

100
Q

What is habituation?

A
  • response to a stimulus declines with repeated presentations of that stimulus
  • foetuses show habituation to a vibroacoustic stimulus as early as 30 weeks gestational age
  • therefore develops very early on
  • highly adaptive- diminished attention to “old” stimuli allows infants to pay attention and learn about new stimuli
101
Q

What is classical conditioning?

A

learning of an association between two stimulus (a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus)

102
Q

What are the components of classical conditioning?

A
  • unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits reflexive response
  • unconditioned response (UCR): the reflexive response
  • conditioned stimulus (CS): a neutral stimulus which will later elicit desired response
  • conditioned response (CR): the response to pairing CS and UCS
103
Q

What are the two processes in classical conditioning?

A
  • acquisition: acquisition of an association between the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus stimulus- animals will acquire bell food association
  • extinction: after animals acquire the association, if the bell is repeatedly, the bell food association will begin to disappear and animals will show reduces salivation response
104
Q

Explain classical conditioning in infants

A
  • association between mother and comfort/ security and warmth
  • learning to feed- UCS= breast, UCR= sucking, CS= breast/ bottle, CR= sucking
  • infants show extinction as young as 2-24 hours old
  • classical conditioning in newborns is limited to biologically programmed reflexes
105
Q

What is evaluative conditioning?

A

where repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus can affect peoples ratings/ preferences for those neutral stimuli
- in older children, classical conditioning can affect preferences

106
Q

What is fear conditioning?

A

where neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented with an aversive stimulus, which leads to fears/ phobias

  • Little Albert (9 month): had no fear for wide range of objects
  • researcher smashed a steel bar down (made horrible noise), Albert was scared
  • noise paired with rat 7 times
  • Little Albert formed fear of rat
107
Q

What is instrumental conditioning?

A
  • concerns relationships between one’s own behaviour and a reward punishment it produces
  • also called operant conditioning
  • e.g eating veg to recieve praise
108
Q

What is reinforcement?

A

Changes in environment that follow a behaviour and increase the probablity that the behaviour will reoccur

  • positive reinforcement: bringing good thinfs to the animal
  • negavtive reinforcement: taking bad things away from animal (increase probablity that behaviour will reoccur)
109
Q

What is a punishment?

A

Changes in envrionment that follow a behaviour and decrease the probablity that the behaviour will reoccur

  • positive punishment: presenting aversive stimulus after a repsonse
  • negative punishment: taking good things away from the animal
110
Q

Studying instrumental conditioning in infants

A
  • we can see evidence for instrumental conditioning very early on in infants
  • Lipsitt et al. (1966) relationship between sucking reponse and sugar
111
Q

What is observational learning?

A

Bandura (1965)

  • observational learning and modelling: watching behaviour of others
  • no reinforcement needed to learn mere exposure
  • but whether behaviour is repeated depends on observed consequences
112
Q

Describe Bandura’s Bobo Dolls

A
  • nursery school children watched adult hits bobo doll
  • adult was awarded, punished or experienced no consequence for beating up the bobo doll
  • children’s actions were determined by model’s actions and the consequences
113
Q

What is imitation?

A
  • imitation is a form or observational behaviour
  • evidence: if a newborn watched an adult slowly and repeatedly stick out their tongue, newborns would also stick out their tongue
114
Q

What are the challenges with measuring infant memory?

A
  • measuring infant memory is notoriously difficult (infants cannot give verbal responses until 1 years old and researchers must rely on innovative methods)
  • early childhood is a time of rapif cognitive growth, but different systems grow at different paces
115
Q

Describe visual and auditory recognition in infants

A
  • foetuses recognise their mother’s voice one- two weeks before birth
  • infants show a novelty preference- they prefer to look at new things
116
Q

What are the two theories as to why memory improves during early childhood

A
  • memory effiency: memory processes improve with age (i.e working memory capacity increases, learning becomes more efficient)
  • memory strategies: children learn effective memory strategies (e.g elaboration, rehearsal, organisation as they get older)
117
Q

Episodic memories in infants

A
  • adults usually don’t rememeber evenfs from the first three years of life and few from the next two (infantile amnesia)
  • young children have something similar to episodic memory but they forget those memories as they age
  • exact cause is unknown
118
Q

Memory in old children

A

As memory becomes adult like (14-15 years), working memory capacity increases and children integrate meaning into episodic memory

119
Q

What is metacognition?

A

Understanding of our own minds

120
Q

What is theory of mind?

A

Awareness that other people have different statds of awareness to you

121
Q

What is metamemory?

A

Our knowledge and awareness of own memory processes

122
Q

Development of metacognition

A
  • from age 5: children know which material is easy/ difficult to learn
  • by the first few years of school, this can be see through Judgements of Learning (JOLs)- measure of metacognition
123
Q

Describe overconfidence in children

A
  • children are overconfifent
  • they overestimate how much they remember
  • they don’t adjust their confidence based on experience
    E..g childre consistently overestimated the number of pictures they would recall across multipme lists
124
Q

Describe metacognitive control

A
  • young children use their metacognitive knowledge to influence their learning
  • by around 7-8, children will choose to restify items that gave lower JOLs more often that items which gave them higher JOLs
125
Q

How can you study for long- term learning?

A
  • retrieval practice
  • spacing
  • interleaving
126
Q

What is retrieval practice?

A

A strategy in which bringing information to mind enhances and boosts learning. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge “out”
- retrieval practive improves learning

127
Q

What is spacing?

A
  • not cramming for long term learning but instead spacing studying out
  • spacing improves memory and category induction
128
Q

What is interleaving?

A

a process where students mix, or interleave, multiple subjects or topics while they study in order to improve their learning

129
Q

Emotion production: what is the discrete/ basic emotion perspective?

A
  • basic emotions: experienced/expressed by all humans and each comprises differentiable, distinct features e.g facial expressions physiological patterns, and subjective feelings
  • e.g happines, anger, fear, surprise and disgust
  • complex, dependent emotions: dependent on interactions between affective and cognitive processes, influenced by experience, learning and socialisation
  • e.g guilt and shame
130
Q

Emotion production: what is the dynamics theory?

A
  • a system made up of components: facial expressions, instrumental behaviours, physiological responses, subjective experiences
  • these components influence and change each other over time via self organisation
  • result of self organistion is more slexible
  • outcomes of self organisation are callrd attractor states
131
Q

Are emotional expressjons universally understood?

A
  • Ekman and Friesan
  • South Fore people in New Guinea (unexposed to Western Media)
  • had to identify correct emotional picture from a set of three (adults) or two (children) that matched a story
  • faces were from Westeners
132
Q

Descrive cogenitallt blind people and facial expressions

A

Congenitally blind people can produce spontaneous emotional facial expressions to seeing people, but have trouble producing voluntary emotional expressions

133
Q

Facial expressions in unborn fetuses

A
  • no in variant linkage between emotional expression and emotion
  • fetuses produce a variety of facial expressions including smiles and pain during non-painful ultrasound
  • findinfs for prenatal facial expressions with a dynamical systems view of emotional development
134
Q

What is the development of smiling in infants?

A
  • 0-2 months: smiling during sleep
  • 2 months: social smile
  • 2-6 months: interactive smiling
  • 6-18 months: referential smiling
  • across childhood: smiles in contexts of social sucess
135
Q

Emotion recognition in infants

A
  • 5 month olds
  • four emotion contrasts: sadness/disgust, sadness/anger, anger/disgust or happiness/surprise
  • examination of within valence contrasts
  • used morphed faces
  • found that infants were able to distinguish between sadness/ disgust and happiness/surprise, couldnt distinguish between anger/disgust
136
Q

Emotion recognition across development

A
  • recognition: recognising and naming of emotional expressions
  • sad, happy, angry, just alright, scared
  • children recognise emotions better with age
137
Q

Summary of emotjon recognition in infants

A
  • infants can discriminate between facial emotional expression
  • various components of emotional recognition improve across childhood
  • vocal boice recognition follow a slower developmental trajectory
138
Q

Social referencing in infants

A
  • 12 month old infants
    3 conditions:
  • face plus voice: faced the cliff, smiled and vocalised
  • face only: face the cliff, and only smiled and nodded
  • voice only: did not face the cliffc continued watching TV screen and vocalised

Findings:

  • voice had strong influence
  • face only took babies longer to cross cliff
  • face and voice took babies really quick to cross cliff
139
Q

Describe the emotion comprehension between 3 and 11 years

A
  • significant age effect for components
  • improvement was much slower for some components than others

Phase 1: understanding of important public aspects of emotion
Phase 2: understanding of mentalistic nature of emotions
Phase 3 understanding of multiple perspectives and emption regulation

140
Q

Summary of emotion understanding in infants

A
  • infants use their caregivers emotional signal as a guide in ambivalent situation
  • children’s emotional understanding becomes more and more complex with age
  • sensitive interpretation of an infanrs desires predicts secure attachment and emotion understanding
  • attachment seems to be related to development of empathy
141
Q

What are examples of emotion regulation strategies?

A
  • attention focus: shifting attention away from an upsettinf event
  • reappraisal: changing the interpretation of a situation
  • suppression: masking the expression of emotional expressions
142
Q

Do adolescents use better emotion regulation strategies?

A
  • ps: dutch children and adolescents betweeb 8 and 18 years okd
  • adaptive strategies (e.g problem solving, distraction, acceptance)
  • maladaptive strategies (e.g giving up, withdrawal, aggressiveness)
  • transient maladaptive shift in emotion regulation strategies
143
Q

Summary of emotion regulation

A
  • the use of emotion regulation strategies changes with development
  • generally, adolescents might use less helpful regualtion strategies
  • evidence in support of emotion- specific use of regulation strategies
144
Q

What is required from children when developing their language?

A
  • comprehension

- production

145
Q

What do children have to learn? What are the components of langauge?

A
  • phonology: system of sounds
  • semantics: meanings of words and combinations
  • grammar: structure of language
  • pragmatics: social rules for language
146
Q

What are the different theories of language development?

A
  • learning theorist
  • nativist
  • interactionist
147
Q

What is the learning/ empiricist perspective in language development?

A
  • language is learnt
  • learn language from environment
  • children are reinforced with grammatically correct speech
  • adults shape child’s speech
  • once words have been shaped, reinforcement is withheld until child begins to combine words
148
Q

What is the nativist perspective in language development?

A
  • humans are biologically programmed to acquire language

- children from all around the world show similar linguistic achievements at similar times

149
Q

What is the interactionist approach in language development?

A
  • suggests that language is the product of both learning and a biologically programmed activity
  • suggests that children across the world develop language at a similar pace because they are members of the same species and share may experiences
150
Q

Factors that affect langauge development

A
  • damage to left hemisphere- leads to apahasia- broca’s area (affects speech production) and wernicke’s area (affects comprehension)
  • sensitive period- missing this sensitive period suggets that there is little chance developing language
151
Q

Describe the sensitive period as infants get older

A
  • data suggets that people become less able to apply a language as they get older
  • study on native english speakers and chinese immigrants
  • founs that when immigrants started learning langauge before 7, their score on test was just as high as english speakers
152
Q

Describe prelinguistic phase

A
  • Infants start to process sounds in the womb

- 1-2 months: indanrs discriminate between different phonemes

153
Q

Describe the preparation for speech production in infants

A
  • parents say they can differentiate between different cries
  • from about 1 month babies begin to coo (they make repeitive vowel sounds signalling pleasure)
154
Q

What is proto-imperative and proto-declarative?

A

proto-imperative: requests for objects/actions

proto-declarative: comments on objects or actions

155
Q

What is the development of speech production in infants?

A
  • cooing and laughing (1 month)
  • babbling and vocal play (4-6 months)
  • canonical babbling (6-10 months)
156
Q

What is canonical babbling?

A
  • babbling repetitive vowel-consonant combinations
  • gradually develop intonation
  • shift to sounds that are heard most
157
Q

How do infants initially learn the meanings of words?

A
  • children construct ‘semantic system’ because words are related to one another
  • learning is ‘constraint’: language learning constraints are correlates of more general constraints on attention and learning
158
Q

What kinds of words are learned first?

A

Mainly general nominals (ball,dog)

159
Q

How do infants go from words to sentences?

A
  • first sentences: combining two words

- telegraphic speech: short and simple, grammatical markers missing

160
Q

Describe the development of grammar in infants?

A
  • very strong correlation between vocab size and complexity of a child’s sentences
  • 2-3 years: telegraphic speech ceases, add inflections, begin to form qs
  • overregularisation: 3-4 year olds appl basic rules to irregular words
  • form complex sentences (3-4 years)
161
Q

Describe correlation between social class and vocab development

A
  • differences in children’s vocab size and the frequencies with which parents talk to their children dependent on social class
  • clear association between social class and no. of words children know
  • children from professional families learnt more words compared to working class
162
Q

What is theory of mind?

A

Fundamental human ability to be able to predict and interpret other people’s behaviour and think about what other people’s mental states are

163
Q

What is social cognition?

A

cognitive processes applied to social information

- thinking about and understanding other people, the self and relationships/ interactions

164
Q

What are the general principles of social cognitive development?

A
  • important differences behave in unpredictable ways
  • people have intentjons, beliefs, desires and these can vary across time and situations
  • relationships are mutual
165
Q

Describe understanding minds

A
  • The ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, presence)
  • An understanding of how the mind words and how mental states affect behaviour
166
Q

What factors contribute to the development of a theory of mind?

A
  • social referencing: babies monitor parental emotional reactions in ambiguous situations
  • joint attention
  • mental state talk
  • metacognition
  • social factors
  • role of environment
167
Q

What is mind-mindedness?

A

Proclivity to comment appropriately on infants mental states- desires, knowledge, thoughts etc

BSc Psychology (5 decks)

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