Exam 2

Question 1

Chomsky (e.g., “language acquisition device”)

Answer 1

• (contrasted with BF Skinner) → Skinner’s approach is based off of the environment that the child is in
• Nativist Approach/model → language arises from the child
• Children are born with the device, as they grow they use innate capacity to learn language

Question 2

Language characteristics (e.g., productive and regular, hierarchical)

Answer 2

• A communication system that demonstrates productivity(finite parts create infinite ideas,) regularity (system of rules), hierarchical (organized into parts like morphemes, sentences, etc)
• These things can be used to create an infinite combination of communications, and we learn it hierarchically

Question 3

Morpheme and phoneme

Answer 3

Parts of the hierarchy of language, morpheme=unit of word, phoneme=sound

Question 4

Nativist perspective of language

Answer 4

Chompsky - u born with it (innate)

Question 5

Learning theory perspective

Answer 5

• BF Skinner
• language is a learned pattern of behaviors unique to a culture. Not innate

Question 6

Early phonological development (e.g., number of speech sounds)

Answer 6

Learning to distinguish speech sounds (there are over 200 speech sounds)

Question 7

Categorical perception and hearing “pauses” between words

Answer 7

• Ability of infants to hear strings of words and make distinction between end of one word and start of another.
• There is no actual longer pause between words, infants are just immersed in the language to recognize it

Question 8

Young infants and perception of foreign languages

Answer 8

• We are born with ability to hear a broad range of phonemes, and environment selects out which we can hear
• young infants are actually better at hearing different phonemes from different cultures, brain has not yet pruned the connections we don’t need

Question 9

Infant directed speech

Answer 9

Baby talk, “motherese”

Question 10

Intersubjectivity (e.g., joint referencing)

Answer 10

• Idea that there is a triangle between the child, scientist, and object (in this case the bunny) but there is this development as a child sees a thing and becomes able to get someone’s attention and say look at this!!
• Between 9-12mo

Question 11

“natural pedagogy” of parents/caregivers with infants (e.g., “ostentatious utterances”)

Answer 11

• naming, pointing, emphasizing objects and activities…”ostentacious utterances” including “look at…” and “are you…”
• Hart and Risley (1995) - higher SES=487 utterances per hour; low SES=187 utterances per hour; signif discrepancy in language input by CA=4

Question 12

Overextensions and underextensions of words

Answer 12

When a child uses a word too specific for something else (not all flying things are birds, not all utensils are spoons )

Question 13

Fast mapping

Answer 13

• Child has learned how to learn
• You know they are at that stage (3-4) because they keep asking you tons and tons of questions
• Around 18mo, infants appear to understand that objects have names, setting the stage for rapid vocab growth. They may grow their vocab from about 50 words at 18 mo to 10,000 by 6 years

Question 14

Principles of children’s language learning:
1. whole object assumption
2. mutual exclusivity principle
3. taxonomic principle

Answer 14

1. A dog is a dog, including the ears, the nose, the tail, etc.
2. Notion that if this thing is an eraser, another thing that looks very different is probably not going to have that same name
3. In fast mapping stage, they start to understand that pretty much everything has a name

Question 15

Structure of syntax

Answer 15

Formation of utterances by combining words (AKA sentence structure)

Question 16

Pragmatic language development

Answer 16

• accurate perception and understanding of speech
• production of intelligible speech
• appreciation of cultural norms
  -inhibition of inappropriate speech or behavior
  (AKA learning how to navigate life with language)

Question 17

Deaf infants and the acquisition of language (hearing and deaf parents)

Answer 17

• deaf children with deaf+signing parents learn language at similar pace as hearing children with hearing parents
• deaf children with non-signing+hearing parents learn language at slower pace because parents are learning sign at the same time

Question 18

Behaviorist perspective – positive reinforcement, punishment, prompting

Answer 18

• power of positive reinforcement, it’s good
• skill behavior, like prompting
• limitations of punishment, its bad

Question 19

Impact of trauma on cognitive development

Answer 19

• PTSD causes children to have a tough time, they seem restless, fidgety, and have trouble paying attention, and could therefore be diagnosed with ADHD
• more in defense mode and react strongly to stimuli

Question 20

HPA axis (amygdala – prefrontal lobe – adrenal gland) and PTSD

Answer 20

• The parts work in tandem, 3 point system, and they work to set the occasion to work with PTSD to compromise cognition
• Hippocampus > memory
• amygdala > emotion
• prefrontal > emotion regulation, planning, problem solving

Question 21

Classical conditioning models of trauma

Answer 21

• PTSD is classical conditioning, someone in trauma context associates loud sound with fear response, and now even in safe space associates loud with fear

Question 22

Memory processing models (e.g., contextual representations and sensory representation)

Answer 22

• contextual = consciously accessible
• sensory = involuntary and dis-integrated from broader memory

Question 23

Emotional processing models

Answer 23

• fitting traumatic event into cognitive schema
• Difficult process. How do you fit such a negative thing into your schema…as a result you may push away that memory and can set the occasion for maladaptive functioning

Question 24

Cognitive model of PTSD (e.g., “perceptual priming”, stroop test)

Answer 24

• If you were to show a picture of an alleyway, those who have had past of being accosted at some point vs those who have not had that experience will describe the scene much differently and have different physiological response
• In stroop test with words with neutral or emotionally charged list of words, kids with trauma are more stopped up reading the words related to trauma

Question 25

“Development” vs “Expertise”

Answer 25

• Discrimination between maturation of individuals and raw acquisition of skills (learning how to do shit) → skills like riding bikes, making change, checking out books, would not be considered development.
• But these skills set the occasion for more development, and more development sets the occasion for more complex skill acquisition.

Question 26

Young children and perceptual learning (e.g., face recognition)

Answer 26

• Face recognition → first few weeks, kids can recognize a human face…but it takes a while for children to make discriminations across faces.(4-5yrs)
• The people they see most often as kids they can tell apart more readily than those who don’t look like the people they know

Question 27

Global and local processing, as relates to young children

Answer 27

Younger children (6-10 years) did poorer on tasks that required global processing, compared to older children (10-12 yrs)
; Porporino et al, 2004) global processing may develop more slowly and be more vulnerable to the condition in which the stimuli are presented.

Question 28

Development of executive functioning skills (i.e., rate and functional ramifications)

Answer 28

• ability to function in a given environment depending on the context
• as you grow older, you are more able to executive function (frontal lobe shit)
• cleaning your room, stopping one task and starting another, etc.

Question 29

Working memory (e.g., capacity for young children vs adults); implications for efficiency

Answer 29

• reasoning and problem solving
• Differences in working memory between younger children (worse) and older children (better)…affects ability to complete tasks

Question 30

Development of long-term memory (e.g., primacy/recency effect)

Answer 30

• Encoding–establishment of info in memory
• Retrieval–recovery of stored info
• Rehearsal–as strategy for encoding, drives up across the childhood years, quantitatively and qualitatively
• primacy/recency effect–words at the beginning and end of a list are remembered more
  Primacy–practices more, recency–still in STM. older children more adept at demonstrating primacy skills, suggesting that they are more prone to practicing rehearsal

Question 31

Childhood amnesia and importance of “salient” events

Answer 31

first memories around age 3

Question 32

Judgment – attribute substitution (and when is usage most likely?)

Answer 32

Exercise sound judgment. What are judgment traps that occur because of the way our nervous systems are organized
We don’t analyze a circumstance using data, we use general vibes (heuristics)

Question 33

Availability heuristic

Answer 33

Conclusions based off of experiences immediately available to you

P words

I think I do more dishes

Question 34

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 34

You look at someone and think that they are going to act a certain way based off of the way that they appear (but your judgment could turn out to be wrong)

Question 35

Higher-order cognitive processes – definition and examples

Answer 35

• Reasoning, Decision making, Problem solving, thinking, Commonality: previously stored information is manipulated in novel ways
• the professor Birkenstock problem

Question 36

“Collections” (Markman) – contrast with Piaget’s notion of “class” (hierarchical)

Answer 36

Related to higher-order processes, can’t expect young infants to organize info in the complex ways older adults do…but others say that children are actually really good at organizing collections of concepts housed together to help understand experiences

flowers vs blue flowers and yellow

Question 37

Growth of knowledge and the “naïve theory approach” – not just expanding schema

Answer 37

holds that children construct commonsense understandings(theories) that have individual concepts embedded in them, and “new” knowledge is experienced in relation to existing knowledge

Question 38

Decision-making – children and adolescents (e.g., complexity of goals, realism)

Answer 38

older children use more logical decision making

Question 39

Decision-making – grocery shopping paradigm/bike purchasing paradigm

Answer 39

grocery shopping; youngins ran into store and went all over, older kids went in with a plan to get things

bike: older kids think about more logical reasons a bike would be good for them

Question 40

Apprenticeships and Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development

Answer 40

Different ways of learning higher order cognitive practices → spending time with others as they show us stuff, how to do stuff

other cultures learn outside of school setting, older people teach skills

Question 41

Reading – whole language vs phonics-based instruction

Answer 41

Prereading (0-6, McD’s logo)
Decoding (6-7; eg alphabet sounds)
Confirmation, fluency, ungluing from print* (7-8; “courage and skill”)
Reading for learning the New (9-13; textbooks)
“Whole-language” (recognizing words) vs. Phonemic Awareness (recognizing and putting together sounds)

Question 42

Metacognition – metacognitive knowledge and regulation

Answer 42

What we know about how we think and how we exert influence over this

Question 43

Metamemory tasks – differences between younger and older children (e.g., adding variables)

Question 44

Metacognitive strategies (e.g., word mnemonics, reciprocal teaching)

Answer 44

Self-testing, spacing, interleaving

Question 45

synaptic pruning

Answer 45

brain prunes unnused synapses as u get old

Question 46

guest lecture

Answer 46

booty but