Developmental Psychology

Question 1

Developmental psychology

Answer 1

Study of changes/continuities in an organism from conception to death

Question 2

True or false: perceptual experience begins in utero

Answer 2

TRUE
- Mother’s voice is most salient external stim that reaches the fetus (speech is low-pass filtered - focused on broader patterns and not finer details)
- Amniotic fluid flavored by what mother has eaten

Evidence
- Newborns prefer mother’s voice + over other woman
- Newborns prefer mother’s native language over other language
- Acoustics of a newborn’s cry exhiit distinctive characteristics of the mother’s native language
- Young infants recognize stories and music they were exposed to while still in the womb
- Carrot juice amniotic fluid study – babies whose mothers drank carrot juice showed more preference for it

Question 3

3 assumptions infant testing methods are based on

Answer 3

1) infants will attend/orient to stim they find interesting

2) Familiarization: infants prefer to hear/see stim they’ve been exposed to before

3) Habituation: if the infant has been repeatedly exposed to a stim to the point of boredom, they’ll prefer the novel stim

Question 4

High Amplitude Sucking Procedure (HASP)

Answer 4

• DV is the infant’s sucking response/strength of sucks (strong = high amp)
• Primarily used w auditory stim

Question 5

Preferential Looking paradigm

Answer 5

• Invented by Fantz 1961
• Infants will look longer at stim they find interesting compared to uninteresting stim
• newborns show preference for faces – esp faces of their own race (due to exposure/familiarity, NOT RACISM)

Question 6

Perceptual development in newborns

Answer 6

• Dev of sight
• Can see 8-12in away, but after that their vision is worse than ours
• Newborns esp attentive to faces/things that look like faces

Question 7

Motor development in newborns

Answer 7

• Dev of ability to execute movements (reaching, grasping, crawling, walking)
• Born w small set of motor reflexes (rooting reflex, sucking reflex)

Question 8

Motor reflex def + 2 types in infants

Answer 8

Def: Motor responses triggered by specific patterns of sensory stim

Rooting reflex: infants move their mouths towards any object that touches their cheek

Sucking reflex: infants suck any object that enters their mouth

Motor reflexes disappear as infants learn more sophisticated motor behavior

Question 9

Evolutionary benefits of infant motor reflexes

Answer 9

Allows newborns to suckle

Question 10

2 principles of dev of sophisticated motor behavior

Answer 10

Cephalocaudal/”top-to-bottom” principle: tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from head to feet (e.g. head –> arms –> legs)

Proximodistal principle: tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from center to periphery (e.g. trunk –> elbow –> hands)

Question 11

Scale error in infants

Answer 11

Infants treat mini objects as if regular sized (e.g. trying to sit in small model train)

Question 12

Cognitive development

Answer 12

The development of thinking and understanding across a lifespan

Question 13

Jean Piaget

Answer 13

• Considered father of modern developmental psychology
• Created Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development; widely accepted bc it explained, not just described, development

Question 14

Piaget’s view on children

Answer 14

• Children are like “little scientists” – naturally curious
• Play active role in acquiring knowledge

Question 15

Schema

Answer 15

Organized unit of knowledge the child uses to try to understand a situation

Question 16

Assimilation

Answer 16

Apply existing schema to a new experience or object

Question 17

Accomodation

Answer 17

Involves changing or creating new schemas in response to new info or experiences

Question 18

Criticisms of Piaget

Answer 18

• Theory doesn’t account much the role of other ppl in child’s world (e.g. siblings, parents, friends)
• May have underestimated children’s abilities - age of acquisition for certain things may be earlier
• Undervalues influence of sociocultural environment

Question 19

Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development

Answer 19

1) Sensorimotor
2) Preoperational
3) Concrete operational
4) Formal operational

Question 20

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 20

• Birth-2 yrs
• Infants experience the world by sensing it and moving in it
• Progress from simple reflex actions to symbolic processing
• Begin to construct schemas (e.g. things come closer if I pull them)
• Develop object permanence
• Will look longer at events that violate their expectations

Question 21

Object permanence

Answer 21

Type of schema that states that something is still present even if you can’t see it

Question 22

Baillargeon “violation of expectatoin” studies

Answer 22

• Examined object permanence in infants
• Found that it developed much earlier than Piaget thought – ~3.5 months

Question 23

Preoperational stage

Answer 23

• 2-7 yrs old
• Dev of prelim understanding of the world (“BEFORE the operations to do the problem-solving tasks”)
• Can mentally represent objects and think symbolically (e.g. use words as symbols for things)
• Don’t pass conservation tasks until 6-7
• Egocentric; Theory of Mind doesn’t dev until later in preoperational stage
• Have difficulty bc of centration and lack of reversibility

Question 24

Centration

Answer 24

Child’s tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation (e.g. their perspective) and ignore other aspects

Question 25

Reversibility

Answer 25

Ability to understand that the order of things can be reversed and it still has the same meaning

Question 26

Conservation + conservation task

Answer 26

Understanding that many of the physical properties of an object are conserved/not changed by changes in the object’s appearance

Conservation task: e.g. pouring water from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin glass doesn’t change the amount of water
(NOTE: conservation task may not be representative of cog abilities; verbally demanding task + transformation is emphasized but superficial)

Question 27

Egocentrism

Answer 27

• Failure to understand that ppl can perceive things another way
• “Hallmark of preoperational stage”

Question 28

Theory of mind

Answer 28

• States that other ppl have perceptions of the world different than our own
• Age of acquisition influenced by variety of factors including number of siblings, socioeconomic status, etc – most important determining factor is language skills
• Children w autism have difficulty communicating w others and making friends – some scientists hypothesize it’s bc they have trouble acquiring theory of mind

Question 29

The 3 Mountains Task

Answer 29

• 3 mountains on a table w chairs around the table –> each chair has a different view
• When asked to describe someone else’s view, children will often describe their own perspective
• Children often don’t pass until 7-8
• Flaws: spatial abilities, memory, verbally demanding task

Question 30

Concrete operational stage

Answer 30

• 7-11 yrs old
• Children learn how actions can transform the concrete objects of the physical world
• Understand conservation
• Reasoning is limited to real, present objects
• Difficulty w tasks requiring mental manipulation
• Difficulty w abstract thinking and hypothetical reasoning

Question 31

Formal operational stage

Answer 31

• 11+ yrs old
• Bceome capable of flexible and abstract thought
• Can reason abt concepts like love or hypotheticals