Developmental Psychology Flashcards
If children are like mini adults, psychologically speaking, then the form of their knowledge would be…?
Quantitatively different from tht of adults
The continuity-discontinuity debate is a ______ theme in developmental psychology
Pervasive - existing and spreading widely throughout people
Behaviourists stresses the importance of nature or nurture ?
Nurture
Give an example of psychic learning
Fish foraging at the surface when the owner stands near the aquarium
Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning focused on the association between what ?
Pairs of stimuli
What is reinforcement ?
A stimuli that follows the emission of a response which renders the same response more probable in the future
Chomsky is a…?
Nativist
What does Chomsky’s theory principally relate to ?
Language development
What is maturational unfolding ?
Genetically determined developmental progression (such as puberty)
Bowlby’s theory of…?
Attachment
Freuds psychosexual theory focused mainly on what ?
Personality development
Piaget belonged to which theoretical tradition ?
Constructivism
What did Piaget mean by egocentrism ?
Children have difficulty understanding other people’s perspectives
Piaget suggested that the stages of development are the products of what ?
Construction
In Piaget’s opinion, is it possible to miss a stage of development ?
No, it’s impossible
Piaget argued that the thinking in one stage of development is ________ the thinking in another stage
Qualitatively different from
What is a micro genetic approach ?
Repeated observations over a period of weeks or months
Modern theories seek to…?
Explain how nature and nurture combine in development
According to Skinner, behaviour is ______ reinforcement
Conditional upon
Behaviourists argue that language development is the product of what ?
Skinnerian conditioning
According to Chomsky what is a ‘deep structure’ ?
A universal grammar that underpins all natural languages
Is a fMRI or an EEG more precise ?
fMRI is more precise
Name two techniques that have been used to good effect with infants for investigating aspects of cognitive and perceptual development
Non-nutritive sucking (sucking fingers and pacifiers)
Preferential looking (monitoring how and where children look in response to stimuli)
Give 4 criticisms for Piaget’s investigation of object permanence
Potential bias in observation
Small sample size
Possibilities of other explanations were not ruled out
The findings were over-interpreted
What did Piaget mean by the term conservation ?
Understanding that an underlying property remains invariant despite changes in appearance
What is the yes bias (Ackerman 1982) ?
Children are biased to the answer ‘yes’ irrespective of what the correct answer is
What is the performative bias (Ackerman 1981) ?
There is a strong tendency for children to not answer a question verbally but by carrying out a relevant action
Who said that we should abandon the mind all together and concentrate on understanding the principles of behaviour ?
B. F. Skinner
Which technique provides the most accurate information about the speed of attention at the level of the cortex ?
EEG
Name 4 things about the mirror neuron hypothesis (Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004)
It predicts it is quite easy for a person to imagine being in the same situation as another whom they are observing
It explains why yawning is contagious
Neurons in ones brain resonate with those in another brain
It has become very well known among the neuroscience community
What is counterbalancing ?
An experimental technique in which all possible orders of presenting the variables are included
In Thouless’ 1931 study, he found…?
Participants exaggerated circularity
Give 4 benefits of brain-imaging techniques
Enables us to identify areas of brain damage
Enables us to understand how cognitive functions are represented in the architecture of the brain
Enables us to test theories
Enables us to address questions on how we can acquire an understanding of the mind
Give 4 limitations of brain-imaging techniques
Testing conditions don’t resemble a real world environment
Only indicates the location of cognitive processes
Preparation for testing can be complicated and time consuming
Testing can be costly
The preferential looking procedure is based on the principle that…?
All things being equal, babies prefer looking at novel rather than familiar objects
What is a challenge for preferential looking ?
Data coding can be difficult
Give 4 true facts about the recording of eye movements using an eye tracker
It measures the direction of the baby’s gaze
It tells us fairly precisely where the baby looked at
Some eye trackers can provide information about pupil dilation
The eye tracker will generate a recording of the scene the baby observed
What method can be used to solve the problem of extraneous effects associated with the positioning of objects in the preferential looking procedure ?
Counterbalancing
At what age do children give non-conserving answers ?
7 and below
What is the most basic form of bias in children answering questions ?
Yes bias
Give 4 facts about intellectual realism
It is measurable in adults and children
Perception is likely to be influences by previous experience and knowledge
Adults judgement is contaminated by knowledge
It can be investigated by asking ps to draw what they see
If children exaggerated circularity when asked to draw a dinner plate they are viewing squarely, the following statement would be accurate
Exaggeration is due to a characteristic in perception
What does the A not B error relate to ?
Objects permanence
According to Piaget, the A not B error implies that…?
Perception is subordinate to action
The term solipsism is most relevant in which Piagetian stage ?
Formal operational
Which process is most relevant in resolving cognitive conflict ?
Equilibration
How many stages of infancy did Piaget find ?
6
What is a classic example of deep seated egocentrism in infants during the A not B task ?
Failure to understand the invisible displacement of an object
What was one of the reasons Piaget offered as to why infants had difficulty with the object concept ?
Lack of imagination
According to Piaget, what is the most important difference between the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage ?
Imagination
According to Piaget, what is one of the most important benefits of mental imagery ?
It allows symbolic thought
During tests of conservation, what did children aged 6 and below say ?
The tall thin glass had more than the short wide glass
What did Piaget aim to investigate during a test of class inclusion ?
An understanding of categorical hierarchy
Give an example of transitive inference
Standing by a wall and marking your height with chalk, and then asking another person to stand by the mark to see if they are taller or shorter
What principle do children use when solving the problem of conservation ?
Compensation
What term refers to a mechanism putatively involved in cognitive growth ?
Equilibration
What does accommodation means in Piagetian theory ?
Modification to a scheme
What does assimilation mean in Piagetian theory ?
Using a scheme in a new way
What is an example of a scheme in Piagetian theory ?
Sucking
What is an example of a formal operation ?
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning (What factor determines the speed of the pendulum)
Who introduced the concept of personal fable ?
Elkind
Imaginary audience is an aspect of what ?
Adolescent egocentrism
What did Bower 1965 find about object permanence and size constancy ?
Children responded to an object that was the same size as presented previously but presented at a different distance during the testing phase
Billargeon, Spelke and Wasserman 1985 measured what in babies ?
Surprise
Wynn’s 1992 study on object concept reveals an incipient ability in what ?
Numeracy
Buuterworth’s 1981 studies on joint attention in infancy reveal what ?
An early ability to calculate the geometry of another persons direction of gaze
Harris’ 1974 investigation into the A not B error ruled out what as an explanation ?
Memory failure
How did Margaret Donaldson criticize Piaget’s experiments ?
They lack human sense
What was the aim of McGarrigle and Donaldson’s naughty teddy experiment ?
To test children’s understanding of conservation
What is level 1 perspective taking ?
Understanding that an obstacle is capable of blocking ones view
McGarrigle and Donaldson argued that young children will fail the class inclusion task because they wrongly think…?
That they are being asked to compare subclass with subclass
Bryant and Trabasso 1971 explained that young children’s errors in tests of transitive inference was a result of what ?
Memory failure
What did Rai and Mitchell’s 2006 study suggest about 4 year olds ?
That they can now appreciate that other people can work things out by process of elimination
What age can children show sings of understanding simple syllogisms ?
4 years old
What does the typical performance of an adult on the selection task reveal (Wason) ?
Confirmation bias
Cheng and Holyoak’s 1985 modification of the selection task suggests that success depend upon what ?
The content of the problem
What is Vygotsky’s scaffolding ?
Cognitive support provided by more cognitively competent individuals
What is Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development ?
A task that is within the child’s capability as long as they receive support from a more competent individual
What is private speech ?
Sub-vocal Thoughts
What did Vygotsky regard language as ?
A vehicle for cultural transmission
What does it mean that Vygotsky was a social constructivist ?
He believed that development owes something to cultural transmission
Who is credited with arguing that a test of false belief is a litmus for investigating children’s development of a theory of mind ?
Dennett
What was the name of the test that Wimmer and Perner 1983 devised involving a boy’s quest to find his chocolate ?
The unexpected transfer test
Perrner, Leekman and Wimmer 1987 devised a test that involved a familiar box containing something other than it usually contained, what was this called ?
Deceptive box test
What age did children pass a conventional test of false belief ?
4
Gopnik and Astington 1988 found that children aged 3-4…?
Perform as well in acknowledging another person’s false belief as in acknowledging their own prior false belief
Flavell, Flavell and Green 1983 disguised a sponge as a rock to test what ?
The distinction between appearance and reality
Gopnik and Astington 1988 concluded that children experience what ?
A radical conceptual shift regarding appearance reality checks
Why did children aged 3 give incorrect judgement on false beliefs (Lewis and Osborne 1990) ?
They misunderstood the question
What phrase is more likely to make children answer correctly (Siegal and Beattie 1991) ?
First of all
Why do children fail to acknowledge their own prior false belief (Wimmer and Hartl 1991) ?
They are embarrassed
In Wimmer and Hartl’s 1991 test of state change, the child’s initial belief about the content of the box was…?
True
Wimmer and Hartl 1991 found children made correct judgement on state change, meaning…?
They undergo a conceptual shift at about 4
How did 3 year olds perform in the state chnage task (Saltmarsh, Mitchell and Robinson 1995) ?
They gave the wrong answer
What findings did Mitchell 1996 report ?
Sometimes adults confuse their own beliefs with other people’s beliefs
What did Dunn 1991 find in relation to parents communication and toddlers acknowledging false beliefs ?
Children who had the most advanced theory of mind had parents who tended to explain people’s behaviours with reference to psychological factors
What did ps do in Bartsch and Wellman’s 1989 variant of a flase belief test ?
Explain rather than predict the behaviour
What is the relation between children’s acknowledgement of false beliefs and how many siblings they had (Perner, Ruffman and Leekam 1994) ?
The likelihood of acknowledging false belief is a positive function of the number of siblings a child has
Lewis 1996 found that the age at which children first pass a test of false belief is ____ related to the size of the child’s extended family
Negatively
What did Lewis, Stranger and Sullivan 1989 investigate ?
Young children’s ability to conceal information
What did Chandler, Fritz and Hala 1989 investigate ?
Destroy evidence
According to Saltmarsh and Mitchell 1998, why did children succeed in acknowledging false belief (Sullivan and Winner’s 1993) ?
The task was based on state change
Cole and Mitchell 1998 found that ____ is related to young children’s ability to acknowledge false beliefs
The mothers wellbeing
What are the environmental factors effecting development ?
Biochemistry of amniotic fluid in the womb
Nutrition
Quality of living space
Socially and intellectually stimulating experiences
What impairments do autistic people have ?
Communication
Social ability
Imagination
What are the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome ?
Intelligence is in the normal range and there is no sign of language delay
What facts are true about ADHD ?
They can be impulsive
Occurs in 2-3% of children
More common in boys than girls
Have struggle focusing their attention
Hyperactivity
What are some features of the frontal lobes ?
Inattention and hyperactivity can be caused by damage to the frontal lobe
Damage is called frontal syndrome
Frontal lobe is developed in humans compared to other species
Frontal lobe controls mental activity, a process known as executive function
Why do people with ADHD have difficulty with delayed reward gratification ?
Disorder at a motivational level
What percent is ADHD heritable ?
75%
What drug is used to treat ADHD ?
Ritalin
According to Denkla 2006 children with Tourette syndrome are more likely to develop features of what ?
ADHD
What are some facts about Tourette syndrome ?
Sometimes co-exists with OCD
Found in 1% of the population
The most common sign is tics
It is caused by bad parenting
What is the difference between Specific Language Impairment and Pragmatic Language Impairment ?
SLI is apparent with children’s delay in mastering basic rules of grammar whereas PLI is a disorder in the social use of language
Echolalia is where children seem to automatically echo words or phrases, it is prevalent in children with what ?
PLI, Pragmatic Language Impairment
What is the difference between developmental dyslexia and acquired dyslexia (alexia) ?
Alexia results from brain injury whereas developmental dyslexia has a genetic basis
What is dyslexia ?
Children who have this disorder have difficulty in reading and spelling that is not explained by poor ability
What is transparent language ?
Where the letters that form words have constant pronunciation
What are some clues as to whether a child is dyslexic ?
They struggle with identity of how many syllables a word has
The struggle to learn the alphabet
Confuse left with right
Stutters
What did Rodrigues 2010 article reveal ?
Left handed people are at a greater risk of having disorders associated with language development
What did McCann 2007 study on ADHD reveal ?
Children became more hyperactive when they consumed a drink containing artificial colours
Features of ADHD overlap with features from which other syndrome ?
Downs syndrome
What is the triad of impairments for autism ?
Impairment of social behaviours with others
Impairment in communications
Narrowing of interests with resistance to change
Children with autism also have ______ learning abilities
Associated learning disabilities
What is the basis of autism ?
Organic
What is Asperger’s syndrome ?
A form of autism with no significant delay in language development
What is the ratio of boys to girls with autism ?
4:1
Who discovered autism ?
Kanner and Asperger separately
The difficulty children with autism have acknowledging false beliefs lend support to which hypothesis ?
Theory of mind
Who developed the Sally-Anne test for false beliefs ?
Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith 1985
What percentage of children with autism passed the false belief study ?
20%
Most children with autism have…?
Difficulty with pretence and make belief
Is difficulty acknowledging false beliefs specific to autism ?
No, children with hearing impairments also have difficulty with this
What is the Wisconsin card test ?
A test of inflexibility of thought
What is the windows task ?
A test of inhibition
What word best describes children in the windows task ?
Perseverance
What does the embedded figures measure ?
Weak central coherence
When children were shown a blue banana what did they do ?
Point at a yellow colour sample
Do children with autism perform well on the embedded figures task ?
Yes
The wisconsin card sort test is more likely to reveal distinctive performance in people with what damage ?
Damage to the frontal lobes
What did Piaget find about children and their sense of numbers ?
They have no sense of numbers and relations until they are 7 years old
What did Clearfeild and Mix’s 1999 study suggest ?
Infants were only sensitive to a change in contour length
What is constructivism ?`
A theory proposing that knowledge is actively generated by the individual, rather than through genes
What are the stages of development ?
Sensori motor
Pre operational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
What is the sensory motor stage ?
0-2 years
Failure to differ between self and the surroundings
What is the pre operational stage ?
2-7 years
Mental imagery without thought
What is the concrete operational stage ?
7-12 years
Principle thought to real life problems
What is the formal operational stage ?
12+ years
Principles thought applied to abstract problems
