Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Bucharest Early Intervention Project
randomised controlled trial of foster care as intervention for children
began in 2000, n = 136 children
children randomly assigned to high quality foster care, or remained in institutional care
average age at entry into foster care was 22 months (range = 6-31 months)
- all children seen for follow-up assessment as 30, 42, 54 months, 8 years and 12 years
- foster care broadly effective in enhancing development and specific domains (brain activity [EEG], attachment, language, cognition) and sensitive periods regulating their recovery
- areas (executing function - memory and cognitive monitoring-), the development/performance was sognificantly impacted by foster care placement
Joint Attention - Carpenter et al., 1998
predicts later social and language devleopment
Gaze following - Farroni et al., 2004
newborns look faster at targets cued by direction of eye movement
Gaze following - Elsbbagh et al., 2012
brains of babies later diagnosed with autism show little difference
Social Referencing - Walden & Ogan, 1988
infant’s tendency to look toward parents in ambiguous situations
- visual cliff
-ambiguous toys
Premack & Woodruff (1978)
does chimp have theory of mind?
- Ability that all people act on the basis of mental states or propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc)
-Attribute mental states or attitudes to oneself and to the others
- Understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions different from one’s own
Baron-Cohen, 2001
theory of mind and autism
- ability to infer full range if mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions) that cause action, able to reflect on content of own and other’s mind
Stages of ToM Development - Meltzoff et al., 2002
Imitative experience with others - first sign of tom development ( imitation starts to develop in infancy)
- Precursor of perspective - taking and empathy
- Recognition of equivalence between physical and mental states apparent in others and those felt in self
- Construction of first-person experience
–> Map the experiences between mental experiences and behaviour (facial gesture)
- Infer about experiences of others
–> On seeing others behave like himself, infer that others have similar mapped mental state
Stages of ToM Development - Baron-Cohen, 1991
Understanding attention
- Critical precursor from ToM development- joint attention abilities
–> Recognises that mental states are distinct and unique to everyone
- Skills formed at 7-9 months of age
- Understanding that
–> Seeing can be directed selectively as attention
–> Viewer assess a seen object as ‘of interest’
–> Seeing induces beliefs
- Sharing → following → directing attention (Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello, 1998)
- Attention can be directed and shared by pointing
–>Taking into account other person’s mental state
Stages of ToM Development - Povinelli & de Blois (1992)
Understanding other’s knowledge
- 3yrs & 4yrs old children
- ‘Hider’ - hid toy in 1 of 4 containers behind screen
- ‘Knower’ - saw hider placing toy
- ‘Guesser’ - left before hider places toy
–> Knower and guesser guided children where toy was
- 4yr old always choose correct cups, 3yr olds inconsistent
Stages of ToM Development - Meltzoff (1995)
Understanding others intentions
- 18 month old children
- E attempted to pull an object away from another to which it is attached, but failed
- Infant able to infer what action person tried to perform
Stages of ToM Development - Call & Tomasello (1998)
Understanding others intentions
- 2-3 year old children,chimpanzees and orangutans
- Able to discriminate when E intentionally vs accidentally marked a box as baited with stickers
- Humans showed most robust results - unique to us
Stages of ToM Development - Wellman & Bartsch
Understanding other’s beliefs
- Begin to explain others’ behaviours based on beliefs at 3 yrs of age
- Moving from understanding intentions to beliefs
- Know that behaviours of others are formed on beliefs
- Sam wants to find his puppy. The puppy might be hiding in the garage or under the porch. Sam thinks the puppy is under the porch. Where will Sam look for the puppy; garage or porch?
- 3yr-olds pass this test
- 3yr-olds do badly on tests of false beliefs
- Sally anne task
Baron- Cohen et al., 2001 - reading the mind in the eyes test
- People with autism tend to score lower on this test
- Tests recognition of complex mental states
–> No executive function required - Artificial constraints not present in real life
–> Limited choice of options
–> Unlimited time to study faces
Auyeung et al., 2009
Measuring play preferences
- Emerges early 6-8 months, though some overlap, boys more into cars and girls prefer dolls and pretend games
Schengel & Barry (1991)
‘social adolescence’
- refers to period between reaching sexual maturity and full sexual maturity
Johnson, Moore & Jeffries (1978)
Tanner Stages of Development
- children shows pictures, told to select most accurate stage they think they are in
issues:
- 1 ethnicity ans culture
- small sample of 200 children
Moffitt (1993)
Maturity gap theory
- gap between biological and social maturity at adolescence can lead to adolescent-limited delinquent behaviour
Marcia (1966, 1980)
interview technique for assessing ‘identity status’ and described in 4 stages
- diffusion - when adolescent face necessity of identity development
- foreclosure - made without exploring any alternative & develops from parental ideas/beliefs
- moratorium - in a crisis and actively exploring alternatives
- acheivement - after crisis, made commitment based on alternatives experienced
Cote and Levine (1988
questioned Marcia, and usefulness of categories, saw adolescence as stage of development rather than stage of disruption
Sweeting et al., 2008 & Collishaw et al., 2004 - adolescent mental health
worsening of mental health in British adolescents between 1980s and recent times
Maughan et al., 2008 - adolescent mental health
increase in mental health problems has levelled off
- said that the factors underlying time trends in child emotional and behavioural difficulties largely unknown
Isle of Wight Study
- Study of al 14-15 years olds on the isle of wight
- More detailed assessment on children with deviant behaviour
- Peak in psychiatric disorders during adolescence
