Intro 2-Developmental Psychology Flashcards
What is the nativist position?
Emphasis on innate endowments. Idea we are ‘preprogrammed’. Descartes, Chomsky, Spelke
What is the empiricist position?
Emphasis on environmental influence and role of learning/observing/culture. Locke, Bandura, Gopnik
What is the neuro-constructivist approach?
Emphasis on relative contributions of nature/nurture, on assumption both are important and they may have a reciprocal relationship
What are twin studies?
Monozygotic/dizygotc. Use statistical models to examine differences in correlations between two twin types to draw conclusions about heritability
What is an example of an influential twin study?
The Twins Early Development Study
What is the role of the environment?
Karmiloff-Smith: view that there are reciprocal interactions between genes and environment. Twin studies cannot discount role of environment (similar upbringing)-look at separated MZ twins, adoption studies, training studies
What research looks into critical periods?
Lorenz: imprinting. Behaviour was experience-dependent. Hess: degree of imprinting depended on age when imprinted and distance travelled
What research looks into active experience?
Held and Hein: active and passive learning in kittens
What methods are used in developmental psychology?
Observations, looking tasks (preferential looking/habituation and preferential looking), neuroimaging (EEG/NIRS/fMRI)
How much of the brain is related to visual perception?
Over 1/2
What methods are used to study visual perception?
Neuroimaging studies. Many use two electrodes rather than a whole EEG net. Visual evoked potentials
What is orientation perception?
Compare random change with orientation change-Braddick
At what age is brain activity produced specifically by the orientation change?
Cortical orientation perception develops at 3 weeks
What is motion perception?
Compare same direction movement with direction change-Wattam-Bell. Looming (at birth)
At what age is brain activity produced specifically by the direction change?
10 Weeks (low speeds) or 13 weeks (high speeds). Experience is important (kittens reared in stroboscopic illumination have no directional cells in visual cortex
What is depth perception?
Pictoral cues (early) eg perspective and interposition. Compare depth changes with red-green and red-red goggles. Responses emerge at 11-13 weeks, and improve depth/detail/stereoacuity within 4-5 weeks of onset (Birch, Gwizada and Held)
What is stereopsis?
Perception of depth through noticing differences between images in two eyes (binocular disparity) Broddick and Atkinson.
What are traditional views of motor control?
Motor development seen as progression through series of milestones, phases or stages. Prominent in 1930s-40s and are still basis for ‘modern’ development scales, eg Bayley scales. Development thought to occur in rigid. strict, timed order
What are modern views of motor control?
Dynamic systems-motor abilities present earlier but experience is limited by other factors. Views pioneered by Thelen and held now by Adolph
What individual differences within cultures are there?
Continuous, not stage like changes (Piek/Adolph and Berger)
What is evidence of variability and flexibility in motor behaviour?
African and Caribbean practices (Adolph et al)
What is the importance of the role of experience?
Infants take around 9000 steps per day (Adolph). Will baby walk down slope experiment-depends on specific walking mode
What are the results of the visual cliff experiment (Gibson and Walk)
6-14 months-shallow or deep end to mother. Role of experience: 7-8 months. May not be as crucial for animals
Does physical context determine motor behaviour?
Thelen, Fisher and Ridley-Johnson. 12 infants held over table top for minute (4 weeks old). By this age, stepping reflex is disappearing. Thought to be result of inevitable neural maturation, but can it be altered by physical context? Stepping with weights decreased stepping frequency. Stepping in water increases it as buoyancy counteracts gravity. Stepping is limited by muscle strength as well as central factors
What did Piaget talk about when discussing cognitive development?
Learning process. Active learning (knowledge is not innate). Construct ways of understanding the world through schemata (patterns of behaviour, mental models, mental operations). Stage like development (identifiable stages which are qualitatively dissociable)
What is learning the result of?
Two processes working together in equilibrium. Assimilation (apply schema to new instance) and accommodation (development of new schema)
What are Piaget’s developmental stages?
Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), Preoperational stage (2-7 years), Concrete operational (7-11), Formal operational period (11+ years)
What is the sensorimotor stage?
Limited skills that gradually allow cognitive development. Developing sensorimotor schema. Primary, secondary and tertiary circular reactions. Develop object performance (4-8 months ‘out of sight out of mind, 8-12months know occluded objects exist, 12-18 months solve A not B error but do not understand invisible objects move)
What happens in the peroperational and concrete operational stage?
Rapid increase in language (symbolic thought) but cannot manimpulate concepts. Egocentrism and perspective taking (concrete operational pass doll POV task). Conservation-counters rearranged but same number remain (early preoperational fail). Seriation and transitive interference in concrete operational only. Class inclusion (sets and subsets) concrete operational pass
What are conservation tasks?
Can involve number, length, liquid, mass, area, weight, volume. These tasks develop at different times, which is problematic for Piaget’s stage-like view
What happens in the formal operational period?
Verbal reasoning. Can reason logically about objects not present. Can conduct verbal reasoning (logical thought about totally hypothetical scenarios)
What are criticisms of Piaget’s theories of cognitive development?
Experimenter (McGarrigle and Donaldson). Language: rephrase to deal with set/subset problem. Memory in line tasks (Bryant and Trobasso). Response mode (Kellman and Spelke). Social context and learning (Vygotsky)-learner has zone of proximal development
What is the post-Piagetion puzzle?
6month infants fail to search for out-of-view object. No representation of invisible object (Spelke)
What did Kelmman and Spelke find about cognitive development?
Babies 3-4 months dishabituated to a broken rod. Understood rod exists, though cannot see it
What is Spelke’s core knowledge theory?
Very young infants have many cognitive capacities available. Cannot be seen in search paradigms, but are observable using looking-time measures. Innate, domain-specific systems of knowledge. Each system has own set of core principles. Learning is enrichment of core principles
What is object core knowledge?
Perceive unity of partly hidden object by analysing movements and configuration of its visible surfaces
What did Baillargeon find?
Showed that object displays to 3 1/2 moth olds. Violation of expectation paradigm. Infants dishabituated when screen appeared to pass through the place where box has been located
What do infants represent (object core knowledge)?
Spatial location of objects, fact that they exist continuously even if hidden, fact that solid objects cannot pass through one another
What are criticiss of Spelke’s core knowledge theory of objects?
Individual variation (drawbridge study, only fast habituators show effects). Need for careful control (when habituated to the impossible event, babies looked longer at possible event). Just interested in novelty (Cashan and Cohen)?
What is number core knowledge?
Xu and Spelke: approximate number system for distinguishing larger set in 6 months. Each habituation set varies size and layout of dots but keeps number constant. Each test set keeps constant display density. 6 months olds looked longer at new number than at old number, can therefore discriminate between set of 8 and set of 16 but not between 8 and 12, so only approximate
What did Mix, Huttenlocher and Devine find?
Infants may have been responding not to number nut to ‘counter length’
What did Feigenson find?
Infants computes number when objects differed in colour, pattern and texture; and continuous extent when objects where identical
What is space core knowledge?
Blue wall study (Hermer and Spelke) rats can use geometric info to reorient when lose sense of direction. Children search at geometrically correct corners equally often
What did Spelke find (core knowledge of space)?
Geometric module for reorientation-impervious to colour information
What are criticisms of the blue wall study?
Very small room (Chen and Newcombe). Toddlers use colour for reorientation in large room (Learmouth et al)
What did Gopnik find?
Very young infants think like scientists (the scientist in the crib). Observe stats/form and test hypotheses to prove theories. 8month old infants looked longer at unexpected display and use info about sample to make inferences about population. ‘Blicket detector’ experiment. Choose object with same causal powers on 74% trials
What did Bowlby 1958 say about attachment?
Infants have innate drive to form close relationship with caregiver. Infants produce social releasers which elicit care. Monotropy. Bond serves as model for other relationships. Maternal deprivation hypothesis
What is the maternal deprivation hypothesis?
Breaking this bond in the first 5 years can lead to profound cognitive/social/emotional consequences
What attachment stages does Bowlby 1969 discuss?
Preattachment phase, attachment in the making, clear cut attachment, formation of reciprocal relationships
What is the preattachment stage?
Birth-6weeks. Orienting and signalling to anyone
What is the ‘attachment in the making’ stage?
6weeks-6/8months. Increasingly orienting to and seeking comfort from primary caregiver
What is the ‘clear cut attachment’ stage?
6/8months-18/24 months. Stay close to primary caregiver. Experience separation protest and fear of strangers
What is the ‘formation of reciprocal relationships’ stage?
18-24 months+. Increasingly accommodates mothers needs/reduction in immediate proximity seeking/development of internal working model of relationships
What is the internal working model?
Captures child’s beliefs about how trustworthy others are/their own value/their own social effectiveness
How did Ainsley’s studies influence Bowlby?
Studies led Bowlby to change his ideas and conclude that infants can have more than one attachment figure
What is the strange situation?
Ainsworth and Bell. Used at 12-24 months to measure attachment
What are the 8 stages of the strange situation?
Mother (M), infant (I), experimenter (E) in room. M and I play. Stranger (S) enters, talks to M, plays with I. M leaves, S plays with I. M returns, S leaves, M settles I (reunion). M leaves, I alone. S returns and tries to settle I. M returns, S leaves, M settles I (reunion)