Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Newborns
Newly born babies
Infancy
The period from birth to around about the second year of your life
Adolescence
The period of development that begins with the onset of sexual maturity (11-14) and lasts until the beginning of adulthood (18-21)
Developmental Psychology
The study of continuity and change across the life span
Nature vs. Nurture
The naive distinction about whether development is genetically determined or dependent on the environment.
What did the ‘human genome project’ find?
That there appear to be only a few genes at work despite the complexity of the human body. It seemed to support the epigenetic stance - our genes can be influenced by our environment.
Canalization
The idea of development as constrained epigenetics
Waddington’s developmental paths
Prenatal stage
The stage before birth - begins at conception
Zygote
a cell that is formed when an egg and a sperm combine
Each human egg cell contains ___ chromosomes.
Each human egg cell contains 23 chromosomes.
Germinal stage
The two-week period that begins at conception. During this time, the fertilized egg (now called a zygote, and consists of a single cell) makes it way down the fallopian tube, and begins to have cell reproduction. Eventually, the single celled zygote becomes a multi celled ball that attaches itself to the wall of the uterus around the end of the second week, which constitutes the beginning of the embryonic stage.
Embryonic stage
A period which lasts from the second week until about the eigth week. During this stage, the zygote continues to divide and its begin to differentiate, forming a blastocyst (ball of cells).
Blastocyst
Cluster ball of embryonic cells
Embryonic disk
Three-layered flattened structure that emerges from the blastocyst
Epigenetic Landscape
Waddington’s epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates development. Among other metaphors, Waddington asks us to imagine a number of marbles rolling down a hill. The marbles will compete for the grooves on the slope, and come to rest at the lowest points. These points represent the eventual cell fates, that is, tissue types. Waddington coined the term chreode to represent this cellular developmental process.
Innate abilities do not develop: True or False?
False
Abilities present at birth are innate abilities: True or False?
False
If you know how to speak English, but produce an ungrammatical sentence, that is a failure of…
Performance
Endorem
Embryonic disk layer that goes on to form the internal organs
Mesoderm
Embryonic disk layer that goes on to form the skeletal muscles
Ectoderm
Embryonic disk layer that goes on to form the skin and the nervous system
What determines the sex of the baby?
Testosterone - Only embryos that have one X and one Y chromosome produce this hormone
Fetal Stage
The period that lasts from the ninth week until birth
How does the brain begin to form in a fetus?
The brain begins to form as a portion of the ectoderm transforms into the neural tube, from which the forebrain and midbrain emerge at one end, while the other becomes the spinal cord
Neural Tube
The cylindrical structure of the embryonic central nervous system
Cells within the neural tube begin dividing to produce neural cells around which week of life? (Cowan, 1979)
Around the third and fourth week of life
The process of forming neural cells is called?q
Neurogenesis
Neurogenesis continues until which week after conception? (Rakic, 1995)
Around 18 weeks after conception
Placenta
The placenta (also known as afterbirth) is an organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall to allow nutrient uptake, provide thermo-regulation to the fetus, waste elimination, and gas exchange via the mother’s blood supply, fight against internal infection and produce hormones to support pregnancy. The placenta provides oxygen and nutrients to growing babies and removes waste products from the baby’s blood. The placenta attaches to the wall of the uterus, and the baby’s umbilical cord develops from the placenta.
What did Stein et al. 1975 find?
That food deprivation (e.g. WWII Nazis emposed food embargo on Dutch cities) during the first six months of pregnancy caused the children to have physical problems (as well as psychological problems - Neugebauer, 1999 and Susser 1999)
Teratogens
Agents that damage the process of development
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
A developmental disorder that stems from heavy alcohol use by the mother during pregnancy
What did Carmichael Olson (1997) and Streissguth (1999) find?
That children with FAS frequently exhibit impaired cognitive development and have more problems with academic achievement compare to healthy children
Children of mothers who smoke tobacco are at a risk of?
- Lower birth rate (Horta, 1997)
- Perceptual and attentional problems in childhood (Fried and Watkinson, 2000)
What did Makin (1991) and Windham (1999) find?
That even second-hand smoke can have a negative imoact on children’s development and abilities
Which structure is vulnerable to the effects of teratogens throughout the entire prenatal period?
CNS
Querleu (1984)
Newborns who are just 2 hours old will suck a nipple more vigorously when they hear the sound of their mother’s voice compare to a voice of a female stranger
DeCasper and Spence (1986)
Babies whose mothers have read the ‘cat in the hat’ repeatedly during pregnancy reacted differently to a passage from the story than to an unfamiliar passage, compare to the control group who reacted the same to both passages
Prosody
The rhythm of speech
Generative processes
Processes which lead to the formation of new structures
Arborization
Process where the cell axon lengthens and grows increasing dendritic branches
Synaptogenesis
The increase in the number of synaptic junctions where cells communicate through the activity of neurotransmitters
Myelination
The formattion of a fatty sheath around the axons of a brain cell
Synaptic pruning
The process whereby synaptic connections die off (as much as 40%/100,000 synapses per second - Kolb, 1995)
What is the purpose of synaptic pruning?
Synaptic pruning occurs exactly for the same reason any pruning should occur (like pruning a bush), it is to rid the brain of wasteful neural connections and make it easier to strengthen the important ones. The brain is a very efficient machine, and the process of pruning is evidence of this. Use it or Lose it!
Burnett and Blakemore (2009)
Brain is still developing well into adolescence
Why is a newborn human’s brain only 25% of its adult size?
- They would need a bigger head to house a bigger brain which would not pass through the mother’s birth canal
- Being born with a brain that develops within our environement rather than one that is already developed (which may or may not meet the requirements of the ever changing environment) is a huge survival advantage
- We are social animals that spend a large portion of our life learning from others. This requires a flexible brain and one that can be moulded by experience (Brain Plasticity)
What are the two different types of brain plasticity? (Greenough and Black, 1992)
- Experience-expectant
- Experience-dependent
Experience-expectant plasticity
Where much of the neural organization is largely pre-specified, waiting for input from the environment.
Experience-dependent plasticity
Where much of the neural organization is not pre-specified and depends on input from the environment
Genetic Epistemology
Genetic epistemology is a study of the origins (genesis) of knowledge
The discipline developed by Jean Piaget was called…?
Genetic Epistemology
How does Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology differ from the previous schools of thought?
He thought that there aren’t any innate ideas and that it’s not just the case that the environment is shaping the child, but rather that the child is actively trying to seek out the information and therefore shaping its own mind.
According to Piaget, initially, children represent the world in terms of ______-_____ ___________?
Sensory-motor representations
The development of the visual system depends on whether the infant receives appropriate visual stimulation within the first ___ ______ of its life. (Hubel, 1988)
6 Months
Atkinson 2000 found that…?
If the child is deprived of critical visual stimulus during the sensitive period, their ability to develop normal visual functions is impaired.
What did Donald Hebb demonstrate?
That rats raised in envieonments with plenty of stimulation had greater cortical connectivity compared to the rats who were raised in a low-stimulated environment.
Elbert et al (1995) studied musicians. What did he find?
Musicians who train for years, have a greater connectivity/activation in areas that control finger movement compared to normal people.
What are the two types of change?
Quantitative and Qualitative change
Quantitative change
The amount/quantity of change
Qualitative change
The type/quality of change
Milestone
An important demarcating event on the path of development
Stage theories
Theories that advocate development as a fundamental reorganisation of the underlying mechanisms.
What is the problem with measuring developmental change?
That we cannot derive valid generalisations about the course of individual change from the course of change in a group average. (Greenwald, 2011)
e.g. there is a common belief that at some point in our lives there is a quick spurt of word knowledge. This is true of group average, but on the individual level, such change is always gradual not sudden. (Bloom, 2000)
Longitudinal research
Experimental designs based on a representative sample of children who are then studied repeatedly over time
Cross-sectional research
Experimental designs based on groups of children who represent a cross-section of the population
Repeated measure
Several data points collected form the same individual
Cohort bias
Anomalies that are predominant in one group that distort comparison between groups
Clinical method of studying children (Piaget)
Manipulating the situation to see how the child’s behaviour changes in a reliable manner.
Visual preference paradigm
Technique that uses differences in duration of looking to infer-pattern discrimination
Fantz (1961)
He discovered that children have a preference of looking at some objects vs other
Preference for novelty
After habituation, organisms prefer to attend to novel stimulation - therefore if after a period of exposure to a certain stimuli, a novel stimulus is presented and the infant devotes more attention to it, it means that the child can distinguish it from the previous stimuli.
Woodward (1998)
Discovered that infants can infer goals and intentions when watching someone reach for an object (longer looking times when an adult appears to change goals).
Violation of expectancy (VOE) paradigm
Where the anticipated outcome is deliberately contravened. According to Baillargeon (1994), VOE researchers believe the infant is not simply passively sitting back and watching the world go by, but is actively trying to work out what will happen next.
Juscyzk (1985)
Researchers can use sucking behaviour to measure the response of a child to a novel stimuli - continues sucking = old event/cant distinguish, pause = novel event
Noninvasive eye trackers
Works by recording reflected infrared light created by shining a harmless invisible beam into the infant’s eye that is reflected back.
Geodesic sensor net
A network of sensitive electrodes that detect tiny changes in the electrical voltage at the scalp surface.
What are the two technological advancements in studying infants?
- Non-invasive eye trackers
- EEG recordings adapted for young children
Structured interview
A consistent set of questions about a topic under consideration
Why was Piaget so interested in the structured interview method?
Because children’s answers (especially their errors) revealed a lot about how they view the world
What evidence did Fritzley and Lee (2003) find against the structured interview method?
That children before the age of three have a bias to respond ‘yes’ to any question.
