Intro to Developmental Psych Flashcards
Why study child development?
Studying development can
provide unique insights into the evolution of the species
(How did we come to be where we are, Individually and as a species?)
What term is used to describe the evolution of the species?
Phylogeny
Define Phylogeny
The evolution of the species
What term is used to describe the evolution of individual organisms?
Ontogeny
Define Ontogeny
The evolution of individual organisms
What is the process of recapitulating in development?
When organisms repeat evolutionary structural changes during the embryonic development
What are the practical reasons for studying developmental psychology?
Helps us promote wise social policies related to child welfare and raising children
What is the Plato vs Aristotle debate?
Nature vs Nurture
What did Plato emphasise about child development and learning?
The children must learn self-control and discipline before they are able to learn other skills
What did Aristotle emphasise about child development and learning?
That each child has different, individual needs and experiences
The process of raising children differs for each child
Between Plato vs Aristotle, who is a nativist (nature) and who is an empiricist (nurture)?
Plato = Nativist (nature)
Aristotle = Empiricist (nurture)
Who believed that our knowledge is innate and has existed since birth? (Plato or Aristotle)
Plato
Who believed that our knowledge is learned and comes from experience? (Plato or Aristotle)
Aristotle
Who is the other philosopher in the 1700s that agreed with Aristotle’s belief of “knowledge is nurture”?
John Locke
Who believed children were born as “blank slates” or “tabula rasa”?
John Locke
What did John Locke mainly believe in when it comes to “knowledge is learnt”?
- That children are born as a blank slate
- That the most important goal of raising a child is character growth/development
What is John Locke’s pov about giving the child freedom as they grow?
Caretakers must give children more and more freedom (gradually) as they grow older
Too much freedom at an early age can cause the child to mature more quickly
Too little freedom at a late age can cause the child to not develop their own character
Which philosopher in the 1700s argued against John Locke’s proposal of giving children more and more (gradual) freedom as they grow older?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What did Jean-Jacques Rousseau propose about giving children freedom?
That parents and society should give the child maximum freedom from the beginning
What were the 2 most prominent theories that converged in the 19th century to form research-based approaches in developmental psychology?
1) Social reform movements
2) Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
How did Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution influence developmental psychology?
The theory inspired research in child development in order to gain insights into the nature of the species
How did the Social Reform Movements influence developmental psychology?
The movements provided some of the
earliest descriptions of the adverse effects that
harsh environments can have on child development
How do you study developmental psychology?
The scientific method is an approach to
testing beliefs which involve:
1) Choosing a question
2) Formulating hypotheses
3) Testing those hypotheses
4) Forming conclusions
What are the 3 main ways to collect data about children when studying development?
1) Interviews
2) Naturalistic observations
3) Experiments
What is the term used when you collect data on children by watching them interact with the environment by themselves (without interfering)?
Naturalistic Observation
What is the term used when you collect data on children by asking them questions and opinions on certain things?
Interviews
What is the term used when you collect data on children by bringing the children into a lab and having them go through different testing conditions?
Experiment
How is naturalistic observation conducted?
Observers position themselves without disturbing/obstructing the children and observe how they behave in that particular setting
What are the advantages of naturalistic observation?
1) Good ecological validity (results can be applied to the real world)
2) Can be used to study a range of behaviours
What are the disadvantages of naturalistic observation?
1) It is hard to control extraneous variables
2) It can only identify correlational relationships and not causal relationships
3) Time-consuming and takes a lot of effort to observe because many behaviours only occasionally occur every day
4) Poor internal validity
How are interviews conducted?
Experimenter asks questions to the participants and they collect the participant’s answers to those questions
What are the 2 types of interviews?
1) Structured interview
2) Clinical interview
How do you conduct a structured interview?
You set pre-determined questions and give the questions to the participants
When is a structured interview useful?
When you collect self reports on the same topics from everyone
How do you conduct a clinical interview?
You give participants a few pre-determined questions but if the participants have something else to say/elaborate on, they are given the freedom to do so
When is a clinical interview useful?
When you want to collect in-depth information about an individual
What are the advantages of interviews?
- Allows full focus on the individual’s behavioural pattern
- Follow-up questions can clarify an earlier response (clinical interviews)
What are the disadvantages of interviews?
- Can be difficult to generalise results beyond the individual case
- Can be difficult to generate a causal argument
- Can sometimes be inaccurate because children can give playful, non-serious/truthful answers when asked questions
What are the advantages of conducting experiments to collect data on children’s behaviour?
- Can directly test relationships between variables
- Experimental control is
relatively easy - Good internal validity
What are the disadvantages of conducting experiments to collect data on children’s behaviour?
- Poor ecological validity = It uses an “artificial” technique to test for behaviour
- Sometimes are not possible to conduct experiments due to ethical issues (or
practical issues)
How can the problems of general experiments (e.g. ecological validity) be overcome?
Through conducting naturalistic experiments
What are naturalistic experiments?
When data are collected in everyday settings
such as the home or in a special playroom at the testing lab
What are the 3 designs for examining/observing child behaviour and development?
1) Cross-sectional
2) Longitudinal
3) Microgenetic
Which experimental design involves observing the behaviours of children over a short period of time?
Cross-sectional design
Which experimental design involves observing the behaviours of children over a long period of time?
Longitudinal design
Which experimental design involves observing the behaviours of children using different participants each time?
Cross-sectional design
Which experimental design involves observing the behaviours of children using the same group of participants over time?
Longitudinal design
What are the advantages of following a cross-sectional design?
1) Quick
2) Common and easy to find participants who are willing to participate in a short-term study
3) Yields useful data about differences among age groups
What are the disadvantages of following a cross-sectional design?
1) Not developmental (you don’t study the children as they get older)
2) Averages across individuals (in reality growth is not smooth and consistent but cross-sectional studies average out the results and make it look like development is a smooth process)
3) Cohort effects
Define cohort effects
Generational difference
e.g.
80-year-olds may not develop aggressive behaviour when playing violent video games simply because when they were growing up, they never played video games
Meanwhile, current 10 year olds become aggressive because they grew up playing video games
What are the advantages of following a longitudinal design?
1) Indicates the degree of stability of individual differences over long periods
2) Reveals individual children’s patterns of change over long periods
What are the disadvantages of following a longitudinal design?
1) Difficult to keep all participants in the study (some participants might drop out over time)
2) Repeatedly testing children can threaten the external validity of the study
Which experimental design involves observing children intensively over a relatively short period of time whilst the children are thought to be going through some developmental changes?
Microgenetic design
What are the advantages of following a microgenetic design?
1) Intensive observation of changes while they are occurring can reveal process of change
2) Reveals individual change patterns over short periods in considerable detail
What are the disadvantages of following a microgenetic design?
1) Does not provide information about typical patterns of change over long periods
2) Does not reveal individual change patterns over long periods
What are the ethical issues in developmental research (what must researchers take responsibility for)?
- Ensure the research does not harm the children physically or psychologically
- Obtain informed consent from parents/guardians and the child (if s/he is old enough to understand)
- Preserve the anonymity of the children who take part
- Counteract any negative outcomes and correct any inaccurate impressions that arise during the study
How do infants learn and develop?
1) Infants’ brains experience synaptogenesis (creation of new synapses and connections)
2) The more infants learn, the more synaptic connections they will have
When does learning begin?
Prenatally
What are the 6 types of learning that help infants learn about their environment?
1) Habituation
2) Perceptual Learning
3) Statistical Learning
4) Classical Conditioning
5) Instrumental Conditioning
6) Observational Learning
What type of learning involves a decrease in responsiveness to repeated stimulation?
Habituation
What is Habituation?
Habituation = A decrease in responsiveness to repeated stimulation
(when they are presented with the same stimulus over and over again but then they lose interest in the stimulus)
How can we tell that the infant has learned something through Habituation?
- The infant has a memory representation of the
repeated, now-familiar stimulus - The speed with which an infant habituates is
believed to reflect the general efficiency of the
infant’s processing of information - Some continuity has been found between these measures in infancy and general cognitive ability later in life
Who conducted a well-known visual habituation experiment?
Maurer and Maurer
Which experiment involved presenting infants with pictures of faces and when the face first appeared, the infant’s eyes widened and stared intently? But by the 5th appearance, the infant did not pay attention to it anymore.
Maurer and Maurer’s Habituation experiment
What did Maurer and Maurer do in their visual Habituation experiment?
- Presented 3 months old with pictures of faces
- At the 1st appearance of the face, the infant’s eyes widen and she stares intently
- With 3 more presentations on the same
face, the infant’s interest wanes and a yawn
appears (habituation) - By the face’s 5th appearance, other things are
attracting the baby’s attention - When a new face finally appears, the infant’s
pays attention to the new face (dishabituation)
Who conducted a well-known auditory habituation experiment?
Eimas
What did Eimas do in their auditory Habituation experiment?
- Allow infants of 2 months to suck on a dummy that is connected to a computer and measure baseline sucking rate
- Present phoneme (/pa/) repeatedly
- Sucking rate first increases and then
infant habituates (i.e., returns to baseline sucking rate - Present new phoneme (/ba/)
- Infant dishabituates (i.e. sucking rate
increases again)
Apart from not paying attention to the same stimulus and decreased sucking rate, what else happens when infants habituate?
Their heart rate decreases
Apart from staring intently at an unfamiliar stimulus and increased sucking rate, what else happens when infants dishabituate?
Their heart rate increases
What type of learning involves using our abilities to see, hear, smell, taste and touch to make sense of the world?
Perceptual learning
What is perceptual learning?
When infants use their perceptual abilities (abilities to see, hear, smell, taste and touch) to search for order and regularity in the world around them
Define Differentiation
The ability to associate a certain stimulus that changes with an element that stays the same
e.g.
Stimuli that changes = Voices of different people (pitch)
Element that stays the same = Voices are auditory (can only be heard)
Differentiation = The ability to tell that the voices come from 2 different people based on the pitch
Define Affordances
When you know that certain objects and/or stimuli require you to do/perform different tasks
e.g.
An infant must learn that small objects can be picked up but large ones do not
e.g.
When playing with a toy that requires you to put the correct shapes into the correct holes:
Infants must learn that round shapes can be pushed into the container though the round hole but square and star shapes cannot
When playing with a toy that requires you to put the correct shapes into the correct holes:
Infants must learn that round shapes can be pushed into the container though the round hole but square and star shapes cannot
What term is used to define this knowledge?
Affordance
The ability to tell that the voices come from 2 different people based on the pitch
What term is used to define this knowledge?
Differentiation
Define statistical learning
Involves picking up information from the
environment, forming associations among stimuli that occur in a statistically predictable pattern
Certain events occur in a predictable order; from quite early on, infants are sensitive to the regularity with which stimulus follows another
The ability to tell which shape comes next after recognising the pattern/order in which the shapes are arranged
What term is used to define this type of learning?
Statistical learning
What does Statistical learning supposedly help with?
a. Language
b. Perception
c. Differentiation
d. Affordances
Language learning
Define Classical Conditioning
A form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus
Who initiated classical conditioning?
Pavlov
Fill in the blank
It is thought that many (………….) responses (both positive and negative) are initially learned through classical conditioning
Emotional
How does classical conditioning work?
1) Neutral stimulus is paired with unconditioned stimulus repeatedly
- NS always comes BEFORE the US
2) After many repeats, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus which induces a conditioned response
3) We induce a CR when we see the CS, even before we see the US
Who conducted classical conditioning on dogs?
Pavlov
What did Pavlov do in his dog classical conditioning experiment?
1) Dogs naturally salivate (UR) when presented with food (US)
2) Pavlov presented dogs with a ringing bell (CS) just before feeding them food (US)
3) After a few repetitions, the ringing bell alone was enough to make the dogs salivate (CR)
Define operant/instrumental conditioning
Involves learning the relation between one’s own behaviour and its consequences
What happens if you behave a certain way (will you get a reward or punishment?)
Who initiated operant/instrumental conditioning?
BF Skinner
What will operant/instrumental conditioning teach you?
Teaches you to repeat behaviours that
lead to rewards and give-up behaviours
that lead to punishment
Define contingency relation
Reinforcement or Punishment (consequences) after you behave a certain way/ perform a particular action
What are the 2 types of reinforcements (rewards) in operant/instrumental conditioning?
1) Positive reinforcement
2) Negative reinforcement
A child gets given sweets as a reward for sleeping early the night before
What type of reinforcement is this?
Positive reinforcement
A child cleans the whole house and her mum decided that she is no longer grounded
What type of reinforcement is this?
Negative reinforcement
What is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement?
Positive = When you do something good, you get given a reward/something good
Negative = When you do something good, something unpleasant/bad gets taken away from you
We eat to avoid feeling hungry
What type of reinforcement is this?
Negative reinforcement
What is the aim of reinforcement?
To encourage children to repeat a desirable behaviour
What is the aim of punishment?
To discourage children to repeat an undesirable behaviour
A child gets scolded by their mother for breaking a vase
What type of punishment is this?
Positive punishment
A child’s iPad gets taken away from them because they refuse to wash the dishes
What type of punishment is this?
Negative punishment
What is the difference between positive and negative punishment?
Positive = When you do something bad, you get given a punishment/something bad
Negative = When you do something bad, something good/a reward gets taken away from you
What is it called when behaviour is neither reliably rewarded nor penalised?
Extinction
Infants of depressed mothers tend to smile less and show lower levels of positive affect than do infants of nondepressed mothers
Is this an example of …
a. Reinforcement
b. Punishment
c. Extinction
c. Extinction
What type of learning involves observing the behaviours of others and attempting to behave the same?
Observational learning
Who recently debunked that young infants can imitate?
Oostenbroek et al. (2016) suggests that young infants cannot imitate
Infants can only imitate when they’re older (by 15 months)
Define Observational learning
Observing the behaviours of others and attempting to behave the same
What term is used when infants imitate adults based on the reason for the particular adult’s behaviour?
Imitating intentions
Define imitating intentions
In choosing to imitate a model, infants appear to pay attention to the reason for the person’s behaviour (intentions)
When 18-month-olds see a person apparently try, but fail, to pull the ends off a dumbbell, the infants imitate the action by actually pulling the ends off
What does this suggest about how a child learns?
Children perform actions that adults intended to do and not what the adults actually did (Meltzoff, 1995)
Children do not imitate a mechanical device at all
