Midterm 2 Flashcards
1
Q
Adolph’s Paper’s Findings
A
- Babies will go right over an edge unless they have many weeks of locomotor experience
- After weeks of crawling, they become more accurate in gaging their abilities on drop-offs, and avoiding those they believe are outside their abilities
- Old hypothesis was that self-produced locomotion leads to a fear of heights, and this fear leads to avoidance
- Evidence for the old hypothesis was that infants with locomotive experience would show an increase in heart rate when approaching a cliff while pre-locomotive infants didn’t
- Newer research has shown that these infants with locomotive experience show an increase in heart rate even if they were allowed to crawl over the edge, showing this increase in heart rate is most likely arousal, not fear
- The infants also don’t show any negative expressions when trying to decide to go over a drop-off or not
- The infants are also willing to get very close to the edge, and sometimes even extend body parts over the edge, suggesting they aren’t afraid, just trying to test out what they’re physically capable of
- infants also show no evidence that they understand the different consequences of falling from different drop-offs
- another piece of evidence against the fear of heights hypothesis is that the infants actions at the edge of drop-offs changed depending on constraints of the study (wearing a heavy jacket or light jacket, shoes with good grip or shoes with poor grip); if they were afraid of heights, their responses should have been the same in all conditions.
- a final piece of evidence is that how the infants responded to the drop off changed when the learned a new type of locomotion; each time they learned a new type of locomotion, they had to start at square one again and would often go right over the cliff until they had weeks practice with this new form of locomotion to be able to better understand the relationship between their body in this new position and they environment.
- All this evidence is consistent with an affordance account
2
Q
Goldfish Study (Gopnik)
A
- This is a study related to the development of the “theory of mind”
- At about 18 months old, infants start to understand that other people can have different preferences from them
- Infants younger than this tend to think everyone has the same preferences as them, hence why they would give the experimenter goldfish even after the experimenter displayed a disgust for goldfish and a like for broccoli
3
Q
False Belief Task
A
- Used to test if I child understands that people can have different beliefs than them
- Kids don’t develop this until ages 4-5
- There are a couple tests we discussed in class: the Sally and Ann task, and the candy/pencil task
- In the sally and ann task, the kids are shown two dolls, a basket, a box, and a ball. The experimenter shows sally putting a ball in a basket, and then leaving
- while she’s gone, they see ann move the ball to the box
- The kids are then asked where sally will look for the ball when she comes back
- Kids who fail the false belief task will say she’ll look in the box, but kids who pass say she’ll look in the basket
- The candy/pencil task is where kids are shown a bag of candy, asked what they think is inside (they’ll say candy), and then it’s revealed to them that it’s actually pencils.
- The kids are then asked what they think someone who wasn’t in the room will think is in the bag (like a parent or another kid), and those who fail will say “pencils”
4
Q
Pre-cursor to False Belief Task
A
- Experiments gave 2.5 year olds the sally and ann task, and measured where they looked, and kids tended to look at the right answer but say the wrong answer, possibly suggesting that an understanding of false beliefs develops sooner than we think, and it’s actually something else, like a lack in motor-functioning or a lack in inhibition that is preventing kids from saying the right answer
5
Q
Candy-Hiding experiment
A
- Tests link between theory of mind and false belief tasks (specifically, deception)
- 3 year olds did an experiment in which they had to hide candy in one of a few cups, and if they experimenter guessed which one had the candy, they got the candy, but if they guessed wrong, the child got the candy
- Each time before the experimenter choose a cup, however, they would ask the child where the candy was
- Clearly all the child has to do is lie to win the game, but it’s very difficult for them to do.
- Kids were then split up into two groups: a theory-of-mind training group, and a control group, in which they were given six training sessions involving either theory of mind tasks, or developing other tasks
- 2 weeks later, after the training, they repeated the candy hiding experiment
- Those who received the theory of mind training lied (and won) about 6/10 times, whereas those who got the other training only lied about 2/10 times.
- To be able to lie successfully, a person first has to understand what the other person’s belief is, and be able to keep the truth in their mind while they come up with a lie
- Kids who had a high theory of mind tended to discover lying faster
- High executive functioning (inhibition) is associated with faster discover of lying.
6
Q
Blue Ball Yellow Ball Study
A
- From Laura Schulz video
- Somewhat similar to the ping-pong ball study
- Babies are shown a box with an apparent distribution of blue balls and yellow balls. The blue balls squeak, and the yellow balls don’t squeak, but have a stick attached to them
- In one condition, the babies are seen a distribution with more blue balls than yellow balls, and the experimenter pulls out three blue balls and demonstrates that they all squeak, and then pulls out a yellow ball and gives it to the child. The babies often try to make the ball squeak.
- In another condition, the babies are seen a distribution with more yellow balls than blue balls, and the experimenter does the same thing, pulling out three blue balls and handing a yellow ball to the baby. The babies tend to not try and make the yellow ball squeak.
- This shows that they will do entirely different things based only on the probability of the same they observed, and that babies are much more likely to generalize evidence when it is plausibly representative of the population than when the evidence is clearly cherry picked
- They then tested what would happen if in the predominantly yellow-ball example, they only pulled out one blue ball before handing the child a yellow ball. In this case, the babies often tested to see if the yellow ball squeaked.
- This shows that babies do care about random sampling, since its much more likely to pull out just one blue ball than three blue balls in a row
7
Q
Certain People/Broken Toy experiment
A
- From Laura Schulz video
- Babies are given a toy that they aren’t able to make work, but before they are given the toy, they are shown evidence that suggests either that the toy only works for some people but not others, or that they toy only works some of the time, and is broken. After they are given they toy, they are also presented with another toy just like it on a cloth that they can pull towards them, and their mom is right next to them, so they can potentially hand the toy to her.
- In one condition, the baby sees one person able to make the toy go, and another person not able to make the toy go
- In this condition, once the baby received the toy and was unable to make it go, they were much more likely to hand it to their mom, suggesting that they believe the toy is person-dependent
- In a second condition, the baby sees the toy work half the time for one person and half the time for another person.
- In this condition, the babies were much more likely to reach for the other toy, suggesting that they believe the toy is broken
8
Q
Innate abilities are shaped by …
A
experience and the environment
9
Q
How do we measure perception in infants?
A
- By observing their behavior
10
Q
implicit vs explicit measures of research
A
- implicit measures are used to capture aspects of cognition that are unconscious and cannot be expressed directly or verbally
- explicit methods require the participant to report on the contents of their cognition or behavior in observable ways that directly relate to the task at hand
- We typically use implicit measures with infants
11
Q
Visual Preference Paradigms
A
- Test an infants visual perception bias
- Tests an infants looking time to see what infants have a perceptual bias towards, and in some cases, would present the infant with competing visual stimuli
- Infants stare longer at more complex images than less complex images, suggesting that they can differentiate between complex and less complex images
12
Q
Habituation
A
- refers to the decrease in response/looking time as a result of repeated presentation of a stimulus
- Habituation actually happens in the womb!
13
Q
Dishabituation
A
- refers to the release from habituation, and occurs when a new stimulus is presented following habituation and response level increases back to what it originally was
14
Q
Use of Habituation and Dishabituation Paradigms
A
- They can be used to infer babies discrimination abilities to see when they can tell things are different from each other
- Familiarity vs novelty
- Best used when an infant doesn’t already have a decided perceptual bias for the thing you are tryin to habituate or dishabituate them to
- A con of these paradigms is that about 50% of the time, kids fail to habituate, and they need to be very compliant
15
Q
fMRI
A
- measure blood flow in the brain (BOLD response) and has precise spatial localization
- Tells you ‘where’ in the brain activation is occurring, but is very difficult to obtain due to the nature of it
16
Q
EEG
A
- measure electrical activity with precise temporal resolution
- tells you ‘when’ activity is occurring, and is much easier to implement on a baby than fMRI
17
Q
Visual Acuity
A
- The ability to see clearly
- Newborn acuity ranges from 20/400 t0 20/600, and doesn’t reach adult levels until about age 6.
18
Q
Fovea Development
A
- The fovea is the area of the retina with the highest concentration of cone photoreceptors (color)
- Visual acuity is highest in the fovea
- The fovea of infants are short, stubby, and less densely packed, as well as much larger than those of adults
- The cones of infants are less sensitive to light than those of adults
19
Q
Color Perception
A
- Infants can discriminate red from white, but not blue, green, or yellow from white
- They don’t get color perception similar to adults until around 4 months old
20
Q
Eleanor Gibson’s studies
A
- Saw that goats would go off the small, real drop-off, but wouldn’t venture over the large, fake drop-off
- Babies would crawl right over the large, fake drop-off until a certain age/ after they had been crawling for a certain time period
21
Q
Motor development is the result of interactions between…
A
- brain maturation, perception skills, changes in body proportions, and the child’s own motivation
22
Q
Timeframe of Movement in Babies
A
- Young infants swipe at nearby objects with minimal coordination in what is called pre-reaching motions
- Infants can sit unaided around 6 months old
- By 7 months, they can reach consistently to pick up objects
- At 6-8 months, babies start belly crawling
- At 8 months they start hand and knee crawling
- At 13-14 months they start to walk
23
Q
Visual Stimuli that infants prefer
A
- Prefer objects in motion over stationary stimuli
- Prefer areas of high contrast (vertices of triangles example)
- Externality effect: 1 month old infants directly their attention primarily to the outside of a figure
- 4 month old infants process stimuli with vertical symmetry better and develop faster rates of habituation compared to horizontal and asymmetrical information
- Infants have a bias for curved stimuli, and for concentric shapes (shapes that share a similar center)
24
Q
Familiarity vs Novelty
A
- At 2 to 4 months, infants develop a bias for familiarity over novelty, and there are two theories for why this is
- Differentiation theory posits that infants perception becomes increasingly specific with time, and the sense of familiarity allows them to distinguish one stimulus from another; infant’s early preferences for familiarity partly arise due to the need to form memory representations
- Goldilocks Effect: the bias for familiarity arises due to an implicit sense that some information is more important than others
25
Q
Auditorial Preferences
A
- Newborns have a bias for high frequency sounds and their mother’s voice over other voices
26
Q
Main types of Learning
A
- Habituation
- Classical Conditioning
- Operant/instrumental conditioning
- Statistical learning
- Prepared learning
- Observational Learning
27
Q
Classical Conditioning
A
- learning through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus
- Unconditioned stimulus(UCS): stimulus that invokes a reflexive response
- Unconditioned response (UCR): a reflexive response that is elicited by the unconditioned stimulus
- Conditioned stimulus (CS): neutral stimulus that is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus
- Conditioned response (CR): The original reflexive response, but now in response to the conditioned stimulus
28
Q
Classical Conditioning: Little Albert
A
- Little Albert was originally neutral to white fluffy things, like rats
- The unconditioned stimulus was a loud noise, and the unconditioned response was crying
- He was then presented with a white fluffy object in the presence of a loud noise
- After this repeatedly occurred, he then would cry when given a white fluffy object; the white fluffy object is the conditioned stimulus, and the crying is the conditioned response
29
Q
Operant/Instrumental Conditioning
A
- First studied by B.F Skinner
- involves learning the association between behavior and result; the change of behavior is elicited by either reinforcement to continue the current behavior, or punishment to stop the current behavior
- Positive Punishment: adding something to decrease behavior
- Negative Punishment: subtracting something to decrease behavior
- Positive Reinforcement: adding something to increase behavior
- Negative Reinforcement: subtracting something to increase behavior
- Operant conditioning can start in humans as young as 2 months (mobile experiment)
30
Q
Skinner Box
A
- An experiment done with mice to test Operant conditioning
- Mice were put in a box with an electrical floor, a lever, a food dispenser, and a few other things.
- In one experiment, if the mouse pressed the lever, food would come out, and it learned this association over time –> positive reinforcement
- in a second experiment, the electric floor would be turned on, but if the mouse pressed the lever, it would be turned off, and the mouse also learned this association –> negative reinforcement
