Infant psych Flashcards
Why we study infant?
Earlier detection of and better responses to abnormal development
Social policy
Better parent
Understand human nature
Inoculation theory
giving somebody what they need to succeed in early on is important because early experience matters
Romanian Orphans
The orphans didn’t experience any touch or social experience, no affection, no play
Outcome: social immaturity, stunted physical growth, severe motor deficits, intellectual delays
How much these orphans recovered is highly depend on age of adoption
- if the deprivation is less than 6 month, they can become normal
- if the deprivation is between 6-12 month, they have some long lasting deficit
- Amount of good experience was not important
Naturalistic observation
Pros: see participants acting normally to “real-world”events
may observe important things you weren’t looking for; gain new insight
Cons: sought after behaviour may never happen
Experimenter effects always possible
huge amount of possible data
Structured observation
Bring children to laboratory, control the environment to attempt to draw out behaviour of interest. Simulate the natural environment in the lab
Pros: behaviour more likely to happen, extra stuff less likely
Cons: a bit unnatural, less ‘real-world’
Correlational design
Measure two variables, determine relationship
Pros: see strength of the relationship between two variables
Cons: direction of causation problem
third variable problem
Experimental design
Experimenter manipulates at least IV and DV
Random assignment to condition
Between-subjects or within-subjects
Cross-sectional
compare different groups of children at different ages
Longitudinal
study the same children over time at different ages, date is collected at intervals of days, months, or years
Microgenetic
same participants studied repeatedly over small amount of time as they master a task (i.e. crawling, word learning)
Deferred imitation
delayed imitation- to test memory of infants. In order to imitate others, infants must know/comprehend the other’s actions or intentions.
Hemodynamic response
measure of oxygenated blood flow in active vs. passive brain areas
- to measure where there’s more oxygen
- Give oxygen and see where it goes
Pros: Good spatial information, non-invasive
Cons: Timing of activity is pretty bad
EEG
Pros: aside from the cap, non-invasive
measuring actual brain activity
Temporal resolution is very good
Cons: Spacial resolution is poor especially with infants
NIRS (near-infra-red spectroscopy)
put the light and fast reflection shows that where the oxygen is less concentrated. If the reflection is slower, the a lot of oxygen is there.
Epigenesis
the emergence of new structures and functions during the development
- look at the chicken egg
Fetuses of different species look more like each other than like what they become
Cephalocaudal
head first development of fetus
Proximo-distal
Innards first develop- skin develop later than organs
Four major developmental processes
- cell division - results in the proliferation of cell
- cell migration - is the movement of cells from their cells from their point of origin to somewhere else in the embryo
- cell differentiation - transforms the embryo’s unspecialized stem cells into roughly 350 different types of cells
- the selective death of certain cells or apoptosis (i.e. hand)
3 periods of prenatal development
- Germinal period: the morula & Blastocyst (conception-2week)
begins with conception and lasts until the zygote becomes implanted in the uterine wall. Rapid cell division takes place. - Embryonic period: (3rd week- 8th week)
following implantation, major development occurs in all the organs and systems of the body - Fetal period : (9th week-birth)
continued development of physical structures and rapid growth of the body. Increasing levels of behaviour, sensory experience and learning
Amniotic Sac/Placenta
Amniotic sac filled with amniotic fluid - protects baby, lets it move unhampered by gravity
Placenta is a network of blood vessels that allows for exchanging fluids between fetus and mom
Teratogens
any environmental agent that can potentially cause harm during prenatal development
- shows a dose-response relation : the more you take, the worse
Autostimulation theory
brain activity during REM sleep facilitates visual development in fetuses and newborns
Alleles
different variants of the same gene that we inherit from each of our parents
Homozygous vs. Heterozygous
if heterozygous, dominant allele is expressed over recessive (i.e. have brown eyes over blues)
Norm of reaction
all the phenotypes that could theoretically occur from a given genotype across all possible environments
Epigenetics
Environmental factors cause genes to express themselves differently (code for more or less of a protein )
These changes can be heritable
Survive cell division within your lifetime
Heritability
the variability in a trait in the population that is attributable to genes Heritability coefficients measured - having arms (0- no variability) - having short hair (0- no genes) - IQ (50-50)
The cortex of brain
Frontal lobe: Planning/Executive function Primary motor cortex: motor Parietal lobe: Spatial Temporal lobe: Emotion/Memory Occipital lobe: Vision
Neuron
Cell body: contains the basic biological material that keeps the Neurons functioning
Dendrites: Receives input from other cells and conducts electrical signals to connections with other neurones
Axons: conducts electrical signals to connections with other neurons
Synapses: the connection space between neurons
Experience-Expectant plasticity
the brain can sometimes reorganize if normal experience is lacking or brain injury occurs
-deaf individuals have language areas tuned to visual information
hearing area is expecting sound input but there’s no stimuli, so the brain area is devoted to visual information
Experience -dependent plasticity
Connections formed as function of individual experiences
- rats growing in impoverished, normal, or complex environment
If there’s a constant experience/stimuli, the part develops more but if you don’t use it, it dies.
Your specific experience change the brain connection
Assimilation
fit new information into existing structure
Accommodation
change structures in response to new experience
Change the rule when they encounter new information that doesn’t fit in the existing structure
Piaget
- stage theorist - qualitative change
- Domain -general: apply to all aspects of the world
- Invariant order: no skipped stages
- Active learner
Information processing theories
Mind as a computer
Emphasis on structure (the brain, neuronal connections) and processes (use of rules and strategies) involved in thinking
There’s not much motivation in the process
Child is perceived as limited-capacity processor
Child as an active problem solver
Basic process of memory
Association- recognition- recall- generalization
Encoding: figuring out what to attend to so other processes can proceed
Processing speed: increases with age- myelination & connectivity - faster and resist distraction
Planning
Begins by 1 year old with means-ends actions
- planning to get what they want is difficult for babies because they are mentally distracted by the objects
- inhibiting desires to solve a problem immediately in favour of finding best strategy is very hard
Core-Knowledge Theories
- The mind is a product of natural selection
- look at the evolution, what kind of factor, skills is important in human life and important skills should be left in our current structure.
- Infant should have innate ability/ skills that are domain specific
Children as active learner
Sociocultural theories
Vygotsky is the most notable theorist
Learning happens in an interpersonal context
Intersubjectivity
The mutual understanding that people share during communication
- imitation
- babies notice when others are responding to them
Joint attention
you and someone else focus on a common referent- emerges around 9 months
- learners need to know what the teacher’s attention/intention in order to learn
Scaffolding
moms repeat and elaborate on what babies say, present information at higher level than they could do on own, eventually infants get it themselves
- i.e. infants just looking at the toys, and mom comes and tell infants “ this is a plane toy, you like plane toy” etc and show them how to use it
Dynamic-systems theories
focus on how change occurs over time in complex systems
- to understand how babies understand objects, we need to understand seeing, reaching, grasping etc
- not all nature or nurture, everything works together
Child as active learner
- emphasis on motivation and the role of action
- practicing new skills
- child is interested in the social world
Sensation
the processing of the external world through receptors in the sense organs
- pattern of light hitting the retina
Perceptions
organizing and interpreting the sensory information
- the experience of seeing
Empiricist vs. Nativist
Empiricists: infants perceive very poorly; experience vital for sense development
Nativist: perceptual development progresses through maturation, not experience
Visual Acuity
the ability to see contrasts/details in the world
Infants prefer high contrast
At which point babies cannot distinguish between grey and stripes? - by measuring the looking time and see if the babies can discriminate one another.
Astigmatism
乱視。seeing stimuli at different orientations with different acuity
Visual accommodation
the ability to focus on objects at different distance
Categorical perception
perceiving clusters of likeness that do not necessarily transfer to physical likeness
- Adults perceive colour categorically, not by absolute wavelength changes
Colour vision rapidly develop, and become really good at by 2 months
Size constancy
an object perceived as the same size despite changes in its distance from us (& hence changes to its retinal image size)
Object segregation
the perception of separate objects in the visual array
- a gap between objects is clear evidence there are more than 1 objects
- Colour/textural cues might help too
- motion of objects
Common motion
elements that move together likely part of the same object
- if there are different motion between the two objects, we can figure out that these two objects are separated and different objects
Perceptual narrowing
the more experience, and your perception become narrower- your brain remove unnecessary skills
Young infants have more ability to distinguish than older babies.