Lecture 20: Child Development/Emotion

Question 1

Delaying gratification predicts later performance

Answer 1

Higher SAT scores, rated by parents & teens as more academically and socially competent
Difference in neural activation during go-no go task during emotionally rewarding trials

Question 2

Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years)

Answer 2

Children begin to think about and understand logical operations, are no longer fooled by appearances (a classic operation is an action that can be undone, ie. light can be turned on/off)
Understanding that an action is reversible enables children to understand concepts such as conservation of quantity
Reason only about concrete things (objects they can act on in the world)

Question 3

Formal operational stage (12 years to adulthood)

Answer 3

Can think abstractly, and formulate and test hypotheses through deductive logic
Adolescents can form hypotheses and systematically test them
Able to consider abstract notions and think about many viewpoints at once
Training may be required to reach this stage

Question 4

More modern ideas

Answer 4

Stages are not necessarily left behind once past - e.g. concrete operational child may go back to preoperational when faced w/ novel task
Neural underpinnings of development: biological underpinnings of specific developmental stages
All adults do not necessarily reach formal operational stage
Age ranges may not be fully accurate

Question 5

Example: language development

Answer 5

Stages of language development are remarkably uniform across all individuals
Not completely independent: social development, joint attention facilitates language acquisition

Question 6

Language has a hierarchical structure

Answer 6

Sentences can be broken down into smaller phases

Phrases comprised of words, words of morphemes, morphemes of phonemes

Question 7

Syntax

Answer 7

System of rules of how words are combined into phrases and how phrases are combined to make sentences

Question 8

Language development

Answer 8

5-6 months: cooing, babbling, simple combinations of vowels and consonants
12-18 months: one-word sentences; understands > 50 words
24 months: vocab of approximately 200 words; hundreds of different 2- and 3- word sentences
By 5 years: vocab of ~2,000 words and use of grammatical structures
Adult vocab of 60,000 words

Question 9

Influence of society and culture

Answer 9

Lee Vygotsky emphasized roles of social and cultural influences on language and cognition
Humans uniquely use symbols and tools to create culture (speech, art, writing)
Culture influences language and language influences cognition

Question 10

Book definition of emotion

Answer 10

"Emotion (sometimes called affect) refers to feelings that involve subjective evaluation, physiological processes, and cognitive beliefs"
In other words: 3 components:
– Subjective experience
– Physiological changes
– Cognitive appraisal

Question 11

Emotion

Answer 11

Emotional states have both physical and conscious “feeling” components
– Physical: alterations in expression, heart rate, trembling
– “Feeling”: subjective assessment of emotional state

Question 12

Overview of systems involved in emotion

Answer 12

Distributed processing of physiological and cognitive aspects of emotional processing, and expression of emotion

Question 13

Primary emotions

Answer 13

Evolutionarily adaptive; shared across all cultures; happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise

Question 14

Secondary emotions

Answer 14

Blends of primary emotions; e.g. guilt (anger and sadness), anticipation (happiness and fear)

Question 15

Circumplex model

Answer 15

Considers valence and activation/arousal
Valence: positive or negative
Activation: level of arousal
– Physiological activation

Question 16

Emotions serve many purposes

Answer 16

Emotions are adaptive
Emotions can be motivating
Emotions can aid recovery
Emotions promote memory
• Physiological arousal may promote memory consolidation
Emotions serve a social function

Question 17

Emotions are adaptive

Answer 17

Universality of emotions?
– Nature or nurture (culture)?
Prepare and guide successful behaviors
– Successful behaviors increase probability of survival
Darwin argued that expressive aspects of emotions are adaptive; they communicate how we are feeling and enable us to understand others