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PSYCH 130 > Midterm 2 > Flashcards

Midterm 2 Flashcards

1
Q

Are neonates (newborns) abilities fully developed? Explain.

A
  • born with some abilities but not fully developed…
  • skin modality (touch is primary way they interact with environment, feel temperature, show pain during circumcision)
  • chemosensation (ex: taste preference for carrots when having carrot juice in utero)
  • audition (ex: prefer mom reading cat in hat over another story)
  • vision (bad vision at birth, better at 6 months, almost perfect by 12 months)
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2
Q

What is perceptual completion?

A

seeing a figure as complete when part of it falls in a blind area of the visual field (filling in what is behind an occluder)

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3
Q

Explain habituation/dishabituation with sound

A
  • repeat the same sound over and over until they get bored (ex: Pa sound)
  • play a new sound (ex: Pa sound)
  • if they get interested again, they can detect the difference (dishabituation)
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4
Q

Describe the visual paired comparison

A
  • measuring preference based off the fact that infants prefer novelty (not which they like more)
  • present one stimulus until they get bored (encoding)
  • show 2 stimuli (the 1st and a difference one) and observe which the infant prefers (the actual test)
  • if they can tell the difference between the stimuli they will look at the new/novel stimuli
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5
Q

After habituation with the rod behind the box, which will infants look at if they understand perceptual completion?

A
  • they will look at the “broken” looking rod because they got bored of the full rod
  • (because they filled it in and could tell it was a full rod even when it was behind the box)
  • if they don’t do this/show no prefernece, they don’t understand perceptual completion
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6
Q

Does movement of the rod behind the box matter for 4-month olds?

A
  • yes, with movement they can understand perceptual completion
  • but without it they can’t
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7
Q

What is the mechanism underlying the development of perceptual completion?

A
  • mechanism = efficient visual attention (they know where to look)
  • stems from increasing cortical/endogenous control of oculomotor behavior (brain maturation)
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8
Q

With the rod behind the box experiment, which scanners understand perceptual completion?

A
  • vertical scanners don’t understand it
  • horizontal scanners do (b/c they. understand that the important info is in the middle)
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9
Q

Describe the motor skills study with non-sitters, tripod sitters, and independent sitters.

A
  • 60 second structured play session where infants were offered toys
  • independent sitters engaged the most
  • they understand 3D object completion because they have the most ability to explore objects with their hands and eyes
  • (this is an example of dynamic systems theory)
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10
Q

What is phonology?

A
  • the sound system of a language and the rules for combining these sounds to produce meaningful units of speech
  • ex: R & L are different phonemes –> rip and lip have different meanings
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11
Q

Describe the magnet effect and how we perceive phonemes.

A
  • phonemes are on a continuum but we perceive them categorically
  • even when they’re played on a spectrum we still hear them categorically as our ear is magnetically drawn to the dominant phoneme
  • we pull out the extra sound & categorized a combination of phonemes as the dominant one
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12
Q

Compare acquired distinctiveness and acquired similarity

A
  • Acquired distinctiveness: we become better at perceiving stimulus properties that are critical for distinguishing native language sounds
  • Acquired similarity: we become worse at perceiving properties that are not critcial for distinguishing native language sounds (because we’re not encountering them as much)
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13
Q

What is the sensitive period for the development of categorical perception of phonemes?

A
  • 10 to 12 months
  • this is when they lose the ability to differentiate the sounds (the baby is now specialized in native language)
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14
Q

Describe the conditoned head turn procedure

A
  • play a sound repeatedly to a baby in the lab
  • when the sound changes, a curtain pulls back showing a musical bunny as a reward
  • eventually they realize the bunny will pop up after a sound change so they look in anticipation of the bunny once they hear a change in sound
  • if they can differentiate the sounds, they will look for the bunny but if they can’t they won’t
  • they can differentiate until about 10-12 months old
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15
Q

What is morphology?

A
  • specified how words are formed from sounds & their relationship to other words in the same language
  • relates to structure of words and parts of words
  • basically the same a grammar
  • ex: walk vs walked, cat vs cats
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16
Q

What are semantics?

A
  • the expressed meaning of words and sentences
  • ex: hit and hug have fundamentally different meanings
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17
Q

What are pragmatics?

A
  • principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts
  • when to use polite forms (ex: don’t email hey girl to professor)
  • how to take conversational turns (ex: be quiet when others talk)
  • how to adjust speech to listener (ex: how you talk w/ friends vs teachers)
  • when and how to ask questions
  • offering/responding to expressions of affection appropriately (ex: i love you too in response to i love you)
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18
Q

What is fast mapping?

A
  • attaching meaning to words after hearing it applied to its referent after only a few times
  • ex: adults told kids to “bring the chromium tray, not the blue one, but the chromium one” –> kids assume the other color is chromium and can come back weeks later still thinking that
  • errors: overextension, underextension, overregularization
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19
Q

What is overextension?

A
  • tendency to use specific words to refer to broad class of objects
  • ex: car in reference to all moving vehicles
    ex: coke in reference to all sodas
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20
Q

What is underextension?

A
  • tendency to use a general word to refer to smaller set of items
  • ex: candy referring to just choclate
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21
Q

What is overregularization?

A

tendency to overuse grammatical rules when they don’t apply
- ex: 1 mouse, 2 mouses instead of 1 mouse, 2 mice

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22
Q

What is prosopagnosia?

A
  • the inability to recognize faces
  • ex: woman in video couldn’t recognize herself or mom in a photo & lost this ability from a brain injury
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23
Q

Are humans better at detecting faces or houses?

A
  • better at detecting faces than other objects
  • skill improves with age
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24
Q

What is the fusiform face area (FFA)?

A
  • the area activated when we see faces
  • cluster of neurons that light up when we see faces
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25
Q

What is the parahippocampal place area?

A
  • the area that’s activated/lights up when you indoors/outdoor scens but NOT faces
  • (houses, rooms, cities, landscapes, etc.)
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26
Q

What is the modular view on organization of the brain?

A
  • the idea that each section of the brain lights up for certain things
  • each area for different, specific things
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27
Q

Do infants prefer faces or top-heavy stimuli?

A
  • they just prefer top-heavy stimuli and faces are included that
  • this changes at 3 months though and they do prefer faces
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28
Q

Does the preference for face-like stimuli increase linearly from birth?

A
  • no, not linear
  • declines from 1-4 months
  • goes back up between 3-5 months b/c they start to learn that they’re agents and can do things
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29
Q

Describe the sticky mittens study

A
  • 4 month olds had or didn’t have velcro mittens on their hands while sitting on caregiver’s laps
  • there were toys to play with and those with mittens started to realize they could move the objects b/c they stuck to the mittens
  • infants with mittens looked back and made eye contact with caregivers b/c they were given a new ability & are realizing they are agents w/ power
  • they look at their caregivers b/c they realize if they can do it, their caregivers probably can too
30
Q

What is the perceptual narrowing hypothesis?

A

early in postnatal life, we undergo a process of narrowing our expertise to a set of stimuli at the cost of perception for non-needed (non-present stimuli)

31
Q

Describe the other-species effect study on if infants and adults can distinguish diff faces in humans/primates. What’s the critical period?

A
  • all infants and adults can distinguish difference bwtn 2 human faces
  • infants can tell difference bwtn primate faces up until 9 months but can’t after that (neither can adults)
  • critical period is btwn 6-9 months for being able to distnguish primate faces
  • this is the other-species effect
32
Q

Describe the other-race effect

A
  • own-race faces are better recognized and remembered when compared with faces of another, less familiar race
  • chance of misidentifying in eyewitness accounts goes up by 50% when not the same race
33
Q

Describe the FFA study on car and bird experts

A
  • brought participants who were either bird experts or car experts into an fMRI scanner
  • Fusiform face area lights up for car experts when shown cars and lights up for bird experts when shown birds
  • it lights up for both when shown faces (b/c they are face experts)
  • this shows that the fusiform face area lights up for things of the person’s expertise
34
Q

Describe the greeble study

A
  • trained adults to be experts on greebles & compared to novices who weren’t trained
  • Fusiform face area was activated when shown faces for both groups
  • when shown greebles, the experts FFA was activated but the novices wasn’t
  • shows that the FFA responds to other novel objects people are experts on
35
Q

At what age do people reach a level of expertise on faces?

A

face experts at 12-14 years old

36
Q

Summarize face processing

A
  • face processing skills increase with age/experience
  • environment plays a major role in shaping brain development
  • modular view is challenged but there is support for the distributed/experiential model
  • development is driven from experience with faces
  • infants prefer face-LIKE stimuli over non-face like stimuli (not actual faces specifically)
37
Q

What is cognition? What is cognitive development?

A
  • cognition = the process of acquiring knowledge and knowing
  • cognitive development = changes in knowledge that are age-related
38
Q

Which kind of conditoning is little Albert?

A

classical conditioning

39
Q

Describe components of operant conditioning

A
  • positive = presentation of something
  • negative = removal of something
  • reinforcement = increase the probability that behavior will occur again
  • punishment = decrease the probability that behavior will occur again
  • must identify behavior (the event), consequence (positive/negative), and effect (reinforcement/punishment)
40
Q

What did Jean Piaget say about intelligence?

A
  • intelligence is a basic life function that enables organisms to adapt to their environments
  • was interested in how children gain knowledge
41
Q

Which view does Piaget have?

A

constructivist

42
Q

Describe the constructivist approach

A
  • children learn many important lessons on their own & are intrinsically motivated to learn
  • children construct knowledge for themselves
  • infants have basic building blocks (reflexes) and they build knowledge/ gain intelligence from there
43
Q

What is intelligence?

A
  • comes in the form of schemas (organized patterns of thought)
  • action based at first (motor patterns) then move to a mental level (thinking)
  • ex: the way a restaurant works is a schema
44
Q

What is cognitive equillibrium?

A
  • a match between thought processes and one’s environment
  • expectation of the way the world works matches what happens
  • ex: you go to a restaurant and the normal script is followed
45
Q

What happens if there is a mismatch (cognitive disequillibrium)?

A
  • adaptation = the tendency to respond to the demands od the environment to meet one’s goals
  • organization = the tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge
46
Q

What is assimilation?

A
  • the process by which people incorporate new information into already existing schemas
  • adding to the schema
  • ex: seeing a new kind of dog and adding it to the dog schema
47
Q

What is accommodation?

A
  • the process by which people modify a schema to incorporate new information
  • ex: accommodating pet schema when seeing a turtle and realizing not all pets have fur
48
Q

What is equilibration?

A

the process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

49
Q

What are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?

A
  • children’s thinking at any particular stage is QUALITATIVELY different from that which preceded it and that which will follow it
  • sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete-operational, formal operational stages
50
Q

Describe the preoperational stage

A
  • second stage, ages 2-7
  • child gains knowledge through engaging in symbolic play (ex: using a broom as a pretend horse)
  • mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and limitations
  • issue of egocentrism (they can’t see from other points of view… ex: mountain task)
  • issue of centration (focus on perceptually striking features/events… ex: # of pieces of cake not size of pieces)
  • don’t understand conservation concept (changing appearance doesn’t change properties… ex: water cups/coins)
51
Q

Describe the concrete-operational stage

A
  • third stage, ages 7-11
  • child gains knowledge through the development of logical thought
  • but only applicable to real/imaginable objects (no abstract thought)
  • ex: if they sneeze every time they see a cat, they can logically deuce they’re allergic
52
Q

Describe the formal operational stage

A
  • fourth stage, ages 12+
  • can apply logical operations to logical and hypothetical phenomena (ex: algebra)
  • cognitive development allows abstract thinking/hypothetical reasoning (comes from formal education)
  • can imagine alternative worlds & systematically reason possible outcomes of situations
  • Piaget believed attaining this stage is not universal
53
Q

What are weaknesses of Piaget’s theory (constructivism)?

A
  • depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is
  • infants/young children more competent than he thought (ex: object permanence
  • understates contribute of social world to cognitive development (we learn from others)
  • vague about mechanisms
54
Q

Which theory is Vygotsky’s?

A

Sociolcultural

55
Q

Describe the sociocultural perspective

A
  • focuses on contribution of other people and the surrounding culture to children’s development
  • guided participation = more knowledgeable individuals help less knowledgable people engage at a higher level than they could on their own
  • Vygotsky said social learning comes before development (with learning, our development moves forward… opposite of Piaget)
  • NEED CULTURE for children to become more complex/have higher mental functions (& culture affects how we think)
  • tools of intellectual adaptation = allows one to use basic mental processes more efficiently through culture (teaches how to think not what to think)
  • learn in zone of proximal development (scaffolding and stretching)
56
Q

Which zone do we learn in?

A
  • proximal development
  • where you’re going just a bit further than you could on your own
  • ex: slightly harder puzzle than one you are growing out of
57
Q

What is scaffolding?

A
  • process where more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own
  • provided by more skilled other
58
Q

What is stretching?

A
  • children can perform one step about their assessed competence when under the guiding hand of the more experienced partner
  • ex: Andrew trying to cook an egg with Prof’s help
59
Q

What is guided participation?

A
  • how we learn
  • consists of scaffolding (done by more knoweldgeable other) and stretching (done by the child)
60
Q

What is internalization?

A
  • internalizing the voice of the more knowledgeable members of society
  • how cognitive change occurs
  • Vygotsky says all psychological processes are originally social processes
61
Q

Compare the 2 views on talking to yourself

A

Vygotsky:
- calls it private speech
- increases during tough tasks
- tool for kids to plan/regulate problem-solving activities
- says language drives cognitive development (learning speech leads to cognitive development)

Piaget
- calls it ecogentric speech
- nonsocial speech reflecting children’s egocentric perspective
- says cognitive development drives language (cognitive development lets us learn speech)

62
Q

According to Vygotsky, why is cooperative learning ideal for cognitive development?

A
  • motivation
  • requires explanation & working through conflicts
  • more likely to use high level processing when working as a group
63
Q

Describe the information processing perspective

A
  • our brain processes the info that comes in through our senses (something comes in, we do something to it, and it is converted to output)
  • mind as a computer metaphor (hardware = nervous system, software = rules, strategies, mental programs)
  • kids gradually pass limitations from increasing efficient processing, expanding knowledge, & learning new strategies)
64
Q

According to information processing, cognitive development arises from children gradually surmounting the processing limitations through what?

A

1) increasing efficient execution of basic processes
2) expanding content knowledge
3) acquisition of new strategies

this brings cognitive development & the “software” becomes more sophisticated

65
Q

Information processing theorists view cognitive change as __________. Explain.

A
  • continuous cognitive change
  • important changes are constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between stages
  • cognitive change typically occurs in small increments rather than abruptly
66
Q

What are the memory system components in the Atkinson & Shiffrin modal model.

A

1) sensory memory:
- sights, sounds, & other sensations that are just entering the cognitive system & are briefly held in raw form until they are identified
- moderate amount of info for fraction of a second & capacity remains constant (doesn’t improve with development)
- ex: meet Kelly at party & forget name right away

2) working memory:
- a workspace in which information from the environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to, and actively processed
- limited in capacity & duration
- capacity/speed increase w/ development
- ex: you meet Kelly & she has the $20 owed to you so you work to make sure you remember her

3) long-term memory:
- refers to information retained on an enduring basis
- unlimited amounts of info indefinitely
- contents increase a ton over development

67
Q

What are the 3 sources of learning/memory development?

A

1) processing speed
2) mental strategies
3) content knowledge

68
Q

Describe processing speed

A
  • speed with which children execute basic processes increases greatly over course of childhood (ex: kids take forever to put shoes on but but by adulthood you don’t)
  • biological maturation & experience contribute to increased processing speed (myelination & increased connectivity in brain regions)
69
Q

Describe mental strategies

A
  • many strategies emerge btwn ages 5-8
  • rehearsal: process of repeating info over & over to aid memory (ex: states song)
  • selective attention: intentionally focusing on info that is most relevant to current goal (ex: paying attention to which parts of lecture will be on exam)
  • utilization deficiency: initial use of strategies doesn’t improve memory as much as later use (ex: typing class)
70
Q

Describe problem solving

A
  • overlapping-waves theory: children use a variety of approaches to solve problems…
  • children possess several diff strategies for solving a given problem
  • more successful strategies become more prevalent with age (you use what works best)
  • children benefit from this strategic variability
  • ex: diff ways to solve math problem
71
Q

Describe the study on content knowledge with chess pieces. What does it show?

A
  • 10 y/o chess experts & typical adults asked to memorize placement numbers on a bard and chess pieces on a board
  • adults remembered numbers better but 10 y/o chess experts remembered chess pieces better
  • shows that memory span is affected by prior knowledge (the more you know, the more you can know)
72
Q

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is best aligned with which notion of development?

A

active orientation

PSYCH 130 (3 decks)

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