Developmental Psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

Developmental Psychology

A
  • Study of how (and why) physical, cognitive and emotional abilities develop throughout childhood
  • How the mind develops in early years and what happens in development to make your mind change
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2
Q

Importance of studying development

A
  • Children’s abilities are very important precursor to what you will be able to do as an adult
  • Interesting to isolate when things that we do automatically do as adults immerge in childhood (e.g. lie)
  • Helps understand why disorders like autism is different from someone who has dyslexia
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3
Q

Infant development begin

A
  • When children are in Utero

- Gestation: roughly 40 weeks

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4
Q

Infant development: by birth

A
  • Brain is similar in structure to an adult brain
  • Brain is only about 1/4 in size compared to adult brain
  • Brains neurons are not fully myelinated or connected
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5
Q

Myelination and synaptogenesis is

A
  • The forming of synapses between neurons
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6
Q

Myelination and synaptogenesis continues

A
  • Until about 2 years
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7
Q

Consequences of a synapses not being used regularly

A
    • If after the age of 2 the synapse is not regularly used then its trimmed away throughout development
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8
Q

Neural Plasticity

A
  • the ability of the brain to form and maintain synapses

- Diminishes with age

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9
Q

Child brain damage or harmful experience (infant development)

A
  • Will have every lasting consequences

- Damage can occur before the child is born

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10
Q

Teratogens

A
  • Substances which cause atypical development for a child if they are exposed to them in utero
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11
Q

Types of Teratogens

A
  • Alcohol and tobacco
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12
Q

Teratogens in pregnancy

A
  • Have an adverse effect on development
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13
Q

Example studies on Teratogens

A
  • Perera et al. (2002) = air pollutions leads to genetic mutation in newborns
  • Latini et al. (2003) = exposure to PVC elements can shorten pregnancy leading to early development
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14
Q

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)

A
  • A more specific type of teratogen is Alcohol

- The consequences of Alcohol on a child in utero is had been grouped into FASD

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15
Q

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Potential outcomes

A
  • Can’t say what is going to happen as there are many potential outcomes
  • The baby can experience physical, mental, and behavioural impairments
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16
Q

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Cognitive and Behavioural impairments

A
  • Infancy: Longer reaction times
  • Pre-schoolers: Decreased attention, hyperactivity
  • Childhood: Learning problems, memory deficits
  • Adulthood: Impaired problem solving and higher rates of substance dependence
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17
Q

Psychologist who invented the stage theory

A
  • Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
  • Constructivist
  • Founding researcher for developmental Psychology
  • Wanted to know how children formed knowledge, how they learn and how people get to know things
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18
Q

Stage theory

A
  • Like Sigmund Freud’s developments from the oral/anal/phallic stages of childhood
  • Children go through a series of stages through their cognitive development
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19
Q

Jean Piaget formation of the Stage Theory

A
  • Tracked at what age children would make similar mistakes and at what age they started doing specific patterns of behaviour = forming Stage Theory from this
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20
Q

Piaget argument

A
  • That you can track at what stage a child is at by asking them to do certain things
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21
Q

Piaget view on children

A
  • As a progressing through a series of cognitive stages towards adulthood
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22
Q

All stages of the Stage Theory

A
  • Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
  • Preoperational (2-7 years)
  • Concrete (7-12 years)
  • Formal Operational (Beyond 12 years)
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23
Q

Sensorimotor Stage (Stage Theory)

A
  • 0-2 years
  • Infants can sense things and can move their bodies
  • Little cognition between the two (can’t think yet)
  • Key cognition ability that children can’t do is object permanence
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24
Q

Object Permanence

A
  • The idea that things exists in the world, even when we cannot perceive them
  • The concept that even though you can’t see something, you still know it’s there.
  • Recognise that objects permanently exists (water bottle example)
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25
Q

Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error

A
  • You ask a child to search for an object hidden at a set location a number of times
  • Then change the location where the object is hidden
  • Children will search for the object in the original location even if they have seen it being moved to a new location
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26
Q

Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error results

A
  • Under the age of 9 months, children fail at this experiment
  • Found that children can’t separate the location of an object from the object itself
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27
Q

Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error: Infants display

A
  • Perseverative reaching

- Usually until they are 10-12 months old

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28
Q

Perseveration

A
  • When infants persist with a response, even when this response is no longer appropriate
  • Piaget argued that this was because infants did not understand object permanence
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29
Q

The end of sensorimotor stage

A
  • Around 2 years
  • Infants begin to use mental imagery
  • They understand things exist independently of themselves and can exist in different location
  • Children begin to understand symbols (Things which represent or stand for other things)
  • They are starting to relate what they see with what they know = moving onto next stage
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30
Q

Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory)

A
  • 2-7 years
  • Children still struggle with egocentrism
  • Children are biased by their perceptions and cannot use ‘operations’
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31
Q

Egocentrism

A
  • an ability for children to see/understand things from another person’s point of view
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32
Q

Egocentrism ≠ Selfishness

A
  • Egocentrism= A cognitive inability to understand how things appear to other people
  • Selfishness= Attitude of always wanting things your own way
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33
Q

Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget argues

A
  • Until the age of 7 children can’t associate what they know and what they see from what they believe other people know and see
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34
Q

Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task

A
  • A child is asked to sit in front of a doll
  • There are 3 mountains on the table in front of the child
  • The child is given a series of pictures and is asked to say which of these pictures best describes the view that the doll has
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35
Q

Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task: Results

A
  • Found that until the age of about 6/7, children couldn’t do this task
  • Still suffer from egocentrism in their perspective
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36
Q

Operation

A
  • A set of logical mental rules that can be applied to solve a problem
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37
Q

Water in different size jugs task: Piaget argument

A
  • In order to pass this task, you need to be able to preform the operation of conservation
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38
Q

Conservation

A
  • Understanding that changes to the way something looks does not necessarily mean the underlying reality is different
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39
Q

Preoperational Stage: Children’s failures

A
  • Children do not yet use operations, and so fail when judging things like quantity and perspective because they are biased by the ways things look
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40
Q

Concrete Operational Stage (Stage Theory)

A
  • 7-12 years
  • Children begin to be able to solve problems and preform operations, providing that these problems are concrete (real in some way)
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41
Q

Formal Operational Stage (Stage Theory)

A
  • Beyond 12 years
    Children preform operations in systematic, rigorous ways, and employ the use of hypothetical situations
  • We learn how to conduct experiments
  • You can use hypothetical scenarios and use them to imagine ways to solve problems
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42
Q

Formal Operational Stage (Stage Theory): Big difference

A
  • The way you solve problems has changed
  • You no longer need to focus on visible problems, but can go beyond what you see (scientific reasoning in abstract problems)
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43
Q

Constructivism

A
  • A child does not blindly absorb information from the world but actively constructs their understanding of the world
  • Piaget believes children are constructivists
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44
Q

Stages of development illustrates

A
  • A learner’s shift from an egocentric point of view to an objective, decentred view of the world
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45
Q

Piaget Theory: Criticism

A
  • Sometimes known as ‘Piaget Bashing’
  • When you take an ability
  • You see what age Piaget said children could do that ability
  • Then knock a few years off it
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46
Q

Issues with Piaget’s ideas

A
  • He did not consider all the influences that affect children’s learning
  • He tended to measure things in limited ways
  • Most of his developments he observed focussed on the child by themselves
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47
Q

Vast majority of children learn by

A
  • Learn from their peers and observing other people
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48
Q

Psychologist who had a different approach to Piaget

A
  • Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)
  • Russian
  • Social constructivist
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49
Q

Social constructivist

A
  • Children construct knowledge through interactions with other people; learning is guided by communication and relationships with others
  • Type of support you get from others will effect how well you will do something and learn
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50
Q

Difference between Piaget and Vygotsky about how children learn

A
  • Piaget tended to think that if children cant succeed the task then they wont do it as they don’t have the ability
  • Vygotsky said that maybe if you gave the child a bit of support they will be able to do it
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51
Q

Vygotsky’s ZOPED stand for

A
  • Zone of Proximal Development (ZOPED)
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52
Q

Vygotsky’s ZOPED

A
  • The difference between what a child can do by themselves and what they can achieve with adult supervision or with peers
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53
Q

Vygotsky emphasise on learning

A
  • The importance of other people in learning
54
Q

Pratt, Kerig, Cowan & Cowan (1988)

A
  • Three year old children worked with their parents on a block-building task
  • The children were more successful on the task due to many factors
55
Q

Pratt, Kerig, Cowan & Cowan (1988): Factors of success

A
  • The amount of suggestive/suggestions given by the parents
  • Whether parents gave MORE support after failure and LESS support after success
  • Contingent support predicts success
56
Q

Pratt, Kerig, Cowan & Cowan (1988): Piaget findings

A
  • Shows the limits that Piaget set on children is not set and stone
  • Its not that children under a certain age are uncapable of understanding certain things its just that you need to help them
57
Q

Social referencing

A
  • When a child uses emotional responses of others to guide their actions
58
Q

Second problem of Piaget’s research

A
  • The tasks he used
  • He was asking too much from the children
  • It didn’t mean the children had not developed the skill the tasks were designed to measure
59
Q

Piaget Criticism

Conceptual understanding ≠ Procedural ability

A
  • Children may have the understanding needed to pass the tasks, but the tasks may be too difficult for them to show it
60
Q

Important developments in infancy

A
  • Newborns very quickly learn their parents smell
  • Varied sensory experiments early in development provide a wide-range of benefits to infants
  • Infants force to things to happen in adults
  • Evidence shows that in the first few hours of being born/days they can start to mimic some facial and motor gestures
61
Q

Varied sensory experiments benefits to infants

A
  • Different textures to walk, different things to look at and different sounds
62
Q

Interacting with a baby, family members will use

A
  • Motionese
63
Q

Motionese

A
  • A specific action style adopted by adults when interacting with infants - like mothernese for language
  • Very enthusiastic, high pitched and animated
  • Evidence suggest that talking that way helps infants understand better
64
Q

Motionese helps

A
  • Process actions
  • Adopted by adults towards infants
  • e.g. helps scaffold learning
65
Q

Infants learn to do things

A
  • Very quickly
  • Could challenge the Piagetian view that infants are merely dealing with the world at a very basic sensorimotor level until the age of 2
  • Suggest that infants are not just sensorimotor at this age (quite complex cognition)
66
Q

Object permanence - Renee Baillargeon view

A
  • Argues that you can find evidence that infants understand object permanence at 5 months
67
Q

Object permanence - Piaget view

A
  • If you let a child play with an object and then you hide the object from them, they wont go and look for it.
  • He said its because the child doesn’t understand that the object is still there
  • He claims that the child is so focussed on what is present that it can’t understand that the object still exists
68
Q

Baillargeon et al. (1985)

A
  • 4 to 5 months old infants looked longer at impossible events than possible events
  • Interpreted as a sign that they had expectations about what was going to happen
  • Child looks longer = must be surprised
  • He claims that these expectations arise because children understood ‘contact principle’ at 4 months
69
Q

Morton & Johnston (1991)

A
  • Present newborns (less than an hour old) with different stimuli
  • Face, scrambled face, blank
  • Observed what newborns would do when these stimuli moved in front of them
  • Newborns followed face more than the other two
70
Q

Viola Macchi et al. (2004)

A
  • Newborns = less than 4 days old
  • Newborns sensitive to the layout of faces
  • Found that newborns were not really biased towards faces but drawn to the configuration of features
  • No preference to faces
71
Q

The Contact Principle

A
  • Distinct objects move together only if they touch
  • 24 week olds appear to recognise this (Leslie & Kneeble [1987])
  • Children under 2 years can understand causality
72
Q

Causality

A
  • I can effect something by touching it

- in simple ways using the contact principle

73
Q

Sobel & Kirkham (2006)

A
  • Children shown 2 boxes and asked which one activates the detector
  • 2 year olds were able to determine which object were likely to be blickets
74
Q

In infancy, children begin to develop the foundations of

A
  • Complex perceptual , cognitive and social abilities we use as adults
  • In the first year of life children begin to show improved causal reasoning, imitation and social referencing
75
Q

Theory of Mind

A
  • Refers to the ability to impute mental states to ourselves and to others (knowing what other people know)
  • A foundational ability that involves understanding peoples behaviour
  • Understanding that other people have mental states
  • Typically assed with False belief task
76
Q

Theory of Mind - 3 Mountain Task

A
  • Children had to figure out how something looks from another persons perspective
  • Piaget found that children could not pass the task until the age of 7
77
Q

Flavell, Everett, Croft & Flavell (1981) - Cat and Dog

A
  • Asked children to preform a number of judgements about what other people could see
  • Question was made easier and a child was sitting across from the examiner and showed them a piece of paper
  • One side of the paper there was a picture of a cat the other a dog
  • Children has to say what they can see and what the other person could see
  • Three year olds could do this
  • Very good at knowing what they could see and what the examiner could see
78
Q

Flavell, Everett, Croft & Flavell (1981) - Turtle

A
  • Bit more complicated
  • Piece of paper with a turtle on it
  • They were asked if the turtle looked like it was on its back to me or on its feet
  • They struggled in recognising HOW things looked to others until age 4
79
Q

The false - belief task

A
  • 2 baskets, Lisa foes into Kitchen, Tom swaps teddy in basket (example)
  • This task requires you to draw a line from what you know to what another person knows
  • This task and theory of the mind research = massive areas of development psychology
  • Another area is Executive Functions
80
Q

Executive Functions

A
  • A set of cognitive abilities that allow you to perform voluntary behaviour (e.g. willpower)
  • Help you focus attention, initiate a plan, monitor your actions
81
Q

As children develop they get better at developing

A
  • Self control
82
Q

Action capabilities of different agents in infants

A
  • Age 3

- Tall dolls can reach high places, small dolls can enter into narrow places

83
Q

Children’s reasoning

A
  • Quite systematic (and not always egocentric) during the preschool years
84
Q

Two foundational abilities in children

A
  • Developing theory of mind

- Executive functions

85
Q

Mental states

A
  • beliefs and desires that represent a thought/attitudes about the world
86
Q

Mental states allow

A
  • You to understand that you know things, and that other people know things, and that different people can know different things
87
Q

People believing something that is incorrect

A
  • Explains a lot about their behaviour

- e.g. you tell flatmate that you’ll be in to study, change mind but they still believe you’ll be home to study

88
Q

Theory of mind allows you to understand

A
  • People believe things about the world
  • Those things can be true or untrue
  • People act in accordance with their beliefs, even if they are wrong
89
Q

Theory of mind: Children

A
  • Under a certain age they don’t understand that people can make mistakes about the world
  • Find it difficult as they assume that everybody knows what the child knows
  • Hard to distinguish what they know from what other people know
90
Q

Theory of mind arose

A
  • Out of Piaget’ Three Mountain Task
  • They have put themselves is someone else’s shoes
  • What the other person believes
91
Q

Folk Psychology

A
  • Reasoning about peoples minds as used by everyone in everyday settings
  • What people do in everyday circumstances
  • What people think about other people
  • They way people try and understand what’s going om with other people
  • Children very quickly start to predict what people are going to do
92
Q

Theory of mind: Social cognition

A
  • Used for reasoning about other people’s behaviour and is part of social cognition
93
Q

Social Cognition

A
  • The study of the processes used to understand the social world - “thinking about other people”
94
Q

Social Cognition improvement

A
  • Thought to improve drastically between 3 and 4 years, as it is at this point that children pass classic false-belief tests
95
Q

False-belief task: criticised

A
  • Too difficult
  • You ask children to imagine a hypothetical situation about characters they have never met
  • Have to remember the names of the characters whilst following the story with multiply alternatives
  • Some versions of the false-belief task and require children to respond verbally (explicit theory-of-mind)
96
Q

Explicit theory of mind

A
  • The ability to reason verbally about other peoples mental states
97
Q

Making False- belief task easier

A
  • People have been doing this by analysing looking-time measures
  • This is when you put a child in front of a eye gaze tracker
  • Allows you to see where people are going to look and track people gaze and how long they look for
  • These look at implicit theory of mind (not verbal)
98
Q

Violation of expectation test (Renee Baillargeon, 2011)

A
  • An adult and a child are present, both are in front of 2 boxes
  • Adult puts the toy in one of the boxes and then the partition closes
  • Adult then moves the toy into the other box and the partition opens
  • This is trying to show that the child couldn’t have possibly see where the toy was moved
  • This measured how long the children looked
99
Q

Violation of expectation test (Renee Baillargeon, 2011): Results

A
  • Children aged 2 1/2 tend to look longer when the actor points to where the toy is (showing knowledge which seems impossible)
  • The longer they looked this was interpreted as surprise, which indicates that the child expected the actor to not know where the toy was
  • At age of 2 and a half, children understand that people should not know things they have not seen (understand that people can be mistaken)
100
Q

Argument of implicit theory of mind and explicit theory of mind

A
  • Implicit theory of mind develops earlier than explicit theory of mind
101
Q

The unexpected contents task (He et al. 2011)

A
  • Before the task starts, infants observe the experimenter empty the boxes
  • The experimenter then places the cheerio’s in the pencil box, and the pencils in the cheerio box
  • Actor did not see the actor switch
102
Q

The unexpected contents task (He et al. 2011): Results

A
  • Found that if somebody displayed impossible knowledge by saying “I want cheerio’s I’m going to look in the pencil box, children looked longer at that
  • By age 2.5, children look longer at the non-matching box trials
  • Children aged 2.5 looked longer when actor points to the crayon box after saying they want cheerio’s
  • Actor doesn’t see initial switch
  • Author claims that young children understand that other people should not know what they themselves know
103
Q

Implicit measures of Theory of Mind

A
  • Violation of expectation, unexpected contacts
  • Often use looking times as a way of testing what children expect to see
  • Implicit tasks people do well on at age 2.5
104
Q

Explicit Tasks of Theory of Mind

A
  • False-belief

- Children can’t really pass those successfully until about the age of 4

105
Q

Implicit and Explicit of Theory of Mind suggest

A
  • There is a difference from what you can expect to what you can articulate (communicate)
106
Q

Executive Functions allows you to

A
  • Set a plan, monitor your progress on that plan and take action when things do not work out
  • Helps you achieve the goals you have made
107
Q

Three components of Executive Functions

A
  • Inhibition
  • Working Memory
  • Shifting
108
Q

Inhibition

A
  • Resisting distraction

- Inhibiting known responses

109
Q

Inhibition

Resisting distraction

A
  • Ability to resist something coming in to distract you from what you’re already doing
110
Q

Inhibition

Inhibiting known responses

A
  • When something happens and you automatically feel like your about to say something
  • Your ability to stop what you’re automatically prone to do
111
Q

Shifting

A
  • Applying new rules to known situation
  • Adjusting to changed demands
  • Changing perspectives
  • (changing your response)
112
Q

Working Memory

A
  • Holding information in mind to be used

- Following arguments, doing mental arithmetic and even reading sentences

113
Q

Marshmallow test (Mischel & Mischel, 1987)

A
  • A child, sat them down and put a marshmallow in front of them
  • You tell them that they can eat it now or if you wait 5 minutes until I get back I will give you 2
  • Child is being asked to go without for an even bigger gain later on
  • Very difficult for children if you have given them nothing else to do
  • This is a test of hot and cold executive functions
114
Q

Hot executive functions

A
  • When you want to give a certain response (eat marshmallow)
115
Q
  • Cool executive functions
A
  • When you don’t care much about giving a response over the other (nothing they really want) (no reward)
116
Q

A-not-B error, infants displayed

A
  • Perseverative reaching usually until they are 10 months old
  • Piaget argued that this was because infants did not understand object permanence
  • Other people have shown that is it more about memory and action control deficits
117
Q

Perseverative reaching is affected by

A
  • Context which can be made easier
  • Infants as young as 9 months are being able to complete these tasks by : adding more search locations and changing the baby’s posture
  • Means that getting these children to pass these tests are not a conceptual change (like object permanence)
118
Q

Autistic Spectrum Disorders

A
  • A heterogenous syndrome characterised by impairment in social skills, verbal and nonverbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behaviours
119
Q

Children with ASD show impaired

A
  • Theory of Mind
  • Struggle with typical false-belief task compared to a 4 year old who doesn’t have ASD
  • In executive functions to a lesser degree
  • Imitation
120
Q

Symptoms of ASD

A
  • Repetitive patterns of behaviour
  • Reduced interest in/poor understanding of social interactions
  • Impaired social skills
  • ADHD, anxiety, depression
121
Q

An important research in Imitation

A
  • Children learn to imitate at about 6 months
  • Children are better at imitating certain actions at different stages of childhood
  • Infants learn to imitate actions on objects if interesting early on
  • Children learn to imitate body actions that don’t cause noise/distinct changes
122
Q

Imitation ASD

A
  • Show impairment
  • Don’t imitate as well on actions without visible effects
  • Mirror neurons have been related to poor imitation
123
Q

One theory about what is impaired in ASD

A
  • Mirror Neurons
124
Q

Mirror neurons

A
  • Brain cells which are active when you watch an action being performed and when you preform that action yourself
125
Q

Mirror neurons argument

A
  • That they are used for understanding other peoples actions and imitation
  • ## Mirror neurons dysfunction is the underlying factor explaining the impairments in ASD
126
Q

Mirror neurons: Theory of mind

A
  • Mirror neurons have been related to understanding intentions
127
Q

Vivanti, McCormick, Young…(2011)

A
  • Did a looking-time task
  • Using eye-tracking, they investigated how children with ASD (10-16 years) use different cues to understand what other people are doing
128
Q

Vivanti, McCormick, Young…(2011) findings

A
  • Children with ASD responded similarly to children without ASD in their ability to:
  • Figure out what people are doing on the basis of context
  • Figure out what people are doing on the basis of emotional expressions
  • Respond to people looking at them directly by paying attention to their face
129
Q

Vivanti, McCormick, Young…(2011): ASD impairments

A
  • Imitating someone when that person is looking directly at them
  • Looking people in the face
  • Using only gaze direction to predict a person’s intentions
130
Q

Vivanti, McCormick, Young…(2011): conclusions

A
  • Children with ASD have some very similar expectations to children without ASD
  • They struggle to use direct gaze and gaze direction to infer a person’s intentions
131
Q

Power experience for Children with ASD

A
  • Direct eye gaze