Midterm Exam 2 Flashcards
Development of Facial Expressions in Infancy
Facial expressions begin as a reflex and then turn voluntary. There are eight distinct facial expressions that occur by 8 months of age. The development of facial expressions is generally universal, and we tend to use similar facial expressions for similar emotions.
Facial Feedback System
when our facial expression influences our emotions.
Social Referencing
Social referencing is when you use other people in your environment to determine how you should feel. This occurs a lot in infants who hurt themselves and check to see how bad it is.
Development of Crying in Infancy
The developmental peak of crying occurs around 3 months of age. The most amount of crying occurs late in the day, and parents can tell the difference between the different types of crying.
Development of Smiling in Infancy
Smiling begins as a reflex during sleep in the form of an endogenous smile. A few weeks after birth, this turns into an exogenous smile, which is a reflex that occurs after some sort of external stimulation like a mother’s voice. Finally, it transforms into social smiling, which is a voluntary action to certain events if one is pleased.
Development of Laughing in Infancy
Laughing appears around 4 months and begins as a giggle reflex in response to physical stimulation. It then is developed into a cognitive interpretation of entertaining stimuli. Laughing is also often influenced by operant conditioning, where fake laughter may be practiced.
Why Anger Develops Later in Infancy
A cognitive prerequisite to feeling anger is the feeling of desire for control. This occurs around sensorimotor stages 4-6 because this is when infants become goal-oriented, which means that they develop that sense of control. They can’t feel anger before this because they haven’t developed the feelings that cause anger at that point.
Why Temper Tantrums Peak in Infancy
This is because temper tantrums are usually a means of expressing anger. One of the main forms of expression is speech. Children don’t develop language until around 2-3 years, meaning that they begin to express that anger through temper tantrums at that age.
Mirror Self-Recognition
These studies put infants in front of a mirror and then put some sort of mark on their faces. If the infants reach for that mark, it shows that they recognize that the person in the mirror is themselves. This ability develops between 18 months and 2 years of age.
Gender Differences in Self-Recognition
Girls develop self-conscious feelings earlier than boys because we have more expectations surrounding them and are more polite than boys early on. The self-conscious feelings at this age are regarding proudness and embarrassment.
Basic Qualities of Measuring Temperament
To measure the emotional distress in temperament, we measure fearfulness, anger, and positive affect (seeming happy). To measure behavior in temperament, we measure activity level, persistence (attention span), and regularity (predictability).
Basic Classifications of Temperament
Easy: easy to deal with; regular and happy
Reactive: gets distressed easily; not positive
Cautious: between easy and reactive; the way they respond depends on their comfort
Criticisms of Classifications of Temperament
1/3 of babies can’t be classified into one of the categories. They are very vague.
Stability of Temperament
Temperament usually remains stable throughout the lifetime.
G-E Correlation Relevance to Temperament
Parents may react to the different types of temperament. If they have a difficult baby, they may become either detached or overly imposing. The parents have expectations of the child’s behavior that were not met, which can cause the child to become even more difficult.
Cross-Cultural Differences in Temperament
The stability of temperament can change based on what culture values what things. In America, positivity is more stable than fearfulness because we value it more. This changes in different countries, like in collectivist cultures, where fearfulness is valued more and, therefore, is more stable.
Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
Bowlby believed that attachment is essential for infants to survive. The bond of attachment between a caregiver and an infant secures the fact that the infant will be taken care of because they need someone devoted to them.
Attachment Behaviors
Using the caregiver as a secure base when exploring new things
Separation anxiety
Stranger anxiety
Happy greetings to the returning caregiver
Attachment Behavior Assessment through the Strange Situation Test
These behaviors are assessed because the infant is put into a location that they have never been in with their caregiver. This tests to see if they use their caregiver as a secure base. Then, a stranger enters the room, which tests stranger anxiety. Then, the caregiver leaves the room, which tests separation anxiety and stranger anxiety. Finally, the caregiver enters the room, which tests whether the infant is giving a happy greeting to the caregiver and if they calm down quickly.
Secure Attachment
An attachment classification where the infant displays each one of the attachment behaviors.
Insecure Attachment
An attachment classification where the infant does not display any of the attachment behaviors.
Avoidant Attachment
A type of insecure attachment where the infant is prematurely independent. They play with their toys the whole time and don’t seem to care if the caregiver is present.
Anxious-Resistant Attachment
A type of insecure attachment where the infant is tense and worried the whole time. They will cling to their caregiver with no playing, and when the caregiver returns, they will not be calmed easily.
Disorganized Attachment
A type of insecure attachment where a child demonstrates their attachment in a way that has not been categorized. Not one test can determine this, and this is often found in children with past trauma.
Influences on Strange Situation Test: Caregiving Qualities
If a caregiver practices contact comfort, prompt responses, and positive interactions with their child, the child is more likely to be securely attached. If a caregiver does not do these things, the child is more likely to be insecurely attached.
Influences on the Strange Situation Test: Infant Temperament
The type of temperament a baby has will influence their reactions to the strange situation test. These reactions are not completely because of their attachment style, but rather, their temperament plays a role too.
Influences on the Strange Situation Test: Culture
In many cultures, most infants display secure attachment. In America, we have the least number of anxious/avoidant infants. Other countries see more anxious/avoidant infants than we do. This could be due to our individualistic vs. collectivistic culture differences.
Brain Development Patterns in Early Childhood
Most of the brain growth is occurring in the frontal lobe. This is because there is a lot of synaptogenesis and myelination occurring in the frontal cortex.
Experience-Dependant Plasticity
Modification in synaptic connections based on environment and experience. Essentially, this means that the environment can affect the way the brain develops. Occurs during early childhood.
Hemispheric Lateralization and Specialization
This is when the left and right brains begin to develop different skills and control different things. This is also when one begins to develop a dominant hand. There is a corresponding growth of the corpus callosum. This occurs in early childhood.
Facial Feature Development in Early Childhood
You begin to lose the babyish features in this stage, where the facial proportions and the head-to-body proportions even out.
Body Growth in Early Childhood
One will experience an increase in both height and weight, averaging a growth of 4 pounds and 4 inches per year.
Dynamic Systems Perspective in Early Childhood
This perspective sees the development of gross motor skills as due to multiple factors, meaning both genetics and the person’s environment.
Gross Motor Skill Development in Early Childhood
Running: children need to acquire balance to do this.
Throwing: Young children use their fine motor skills to throw and don’t have good aim due to their stance, strength, or timing.
Catching: Young children typically smack their hands together, close their eyes while catching, and keep their feet planted in one place.
Grasping in Early Childhood
This continues to develop as children gain fine motor control of their fingers.
Writing and Drawing Development in Early Childhood
Scribbling: sensorimotor based
Post-Hoc Identification: after drawing, a child will identify the image (no goal going into it).
Symbolic Representation: Using lines to create intentional shapes. This includes tadpole people.
Clearly Depicted Images: These drawings are more realistic and can vary on gender. Girls tend to draw stereotypes at eye level with warm colors. Boys tend to draw stereotypes at a birds-eye view with cooler tones.
Handedness in Early Childhood
Handedness is genetically determined, but based on the environment, it is possible to specialize in the hand you are not dominant in due to parental influence. This is because we live in a right-handed world.
Sleeping Functions in Early Childhood
Children at this age spend around 10-12 hours a day sleeping, mostly in REM. This is important because it gives the brain time to develop and gives the body time to grow.
Transitional Objects
These are items that children use to soothe themselves to sleep. They become a problem because kids won’t be able to sleep without them if they get lost or broken.
Nightmares
8/10 dreams contain anxiety-inducing content. Children have a harder time recovering from these distressing dreams because of their poor emotional regulation and coping skills.
Night Terrors
these are scary thoughts or visions that occur during non-REM sleep, unlike nightmares. They are so frightening that they wake you up, and it is very hard to fall back asleep. If they are reoccurring, it could be diagnosed as a disorder.
Insomnia
This is a disorder where a person is very tired but can’t fall asleep. The most common cause of this is anxiety, so most treatments focus on coping with anxiety. Children have daily stress, but then they can also be stressed from imagined fears.
Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Some effects include poor cognition, bad moods, hyperactive behavior based on the little energy to inhibit it, illnesses, and accidents.
Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
Refers to children between 2-7 years old. This is when children don’t readily recognize reversible logic.
Symbolic Representation
This skill gained in the preoperational stage is when children can use symbols to represent objects and ideas. It is evident in make-believe/sociodramatic play, having imaginary friends, understanding scale model toys, and drawing (more maturely).
New Types of Play
Make-believe play is when a child uses objects that they have available to represent something that is not available.
Sociodramatic play is when a child takes on roles that you don’t have in life.
Irreversibility
This is when a child can’t understand reversible actions. An example of this is when a child doesn’t understand that you can reverse the action of smashing playdough. Prevalent in the preoperational stage.
Centration
This is when a child focuses on one thing and ignores everything else occurring. An example of this would be a child focusing solely on the height of a glass to determine its volume. Prevalent in the preoperational stage.
Static Thinking
This is when a child focuses on a start and end state rather than the process. An example of this would be a child struggling to understand that their parents were children once. Prevalent in the preoperational stage.
Failure of Conservation Tasks in Early Childhood
Irreversibility, centration, and static thinking all result in this inability to understand that the fundamental qualities of objects don’t change if the superficial characteristics do. An example of these tasks would include the water task and the play dough task.
Transductive and Pre-Causal Reasoning
This is the logical failure where children believe that correlation implies causation when, in fact, it does not. An example of this logical error is that a child gets a bad grade on a test, and immediately after, their parents divorce. The child then believes that the divorce was caused by their bad grade. Children have a wandering mind, so if they don’t receive an answer as to why something is occurring, they will guess the causation. Prevalent in early childhood.
Theory of Mind
This describes when a child can’t understand that not everyone thinks or sees the same as they do. This causes the failure of a physical perspective-taking task where a child is asked to tell a tester what the tester sees on their side of a mountain. The child will respond with only what they see, not the tester.
Social Perspective Taking
This is specifically when a child doesn’t understand that people know the same things as they do. A child will assume everyone knows the same things as they do at this age. This explains why children are so bad at lying. When they get better, it indicates that they have social perspective-taking skills. Not prevalent in preoperational stage.
Animism
This is when children imagine that inanimate objects are living and have thoughts and feelings. Prevalent in the preoperational stage.
Criticism of Piaget’s Preoperational Theory
People believed Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of children at this age. The tests that he conducted may have had some cultural bias involved and caused false negatives. It is also possible for students to be led to answer incorrectly because of the weird stimuli and artificial nature of the tests.
Storing of Vivid Information Easily
Flashbulb memories are ones that are so important to the child, they can remember the scene clearly.
Areas of expertise are things a child is obsessed with, so they seek out more information on the subject.
Use of Scripts with Memory
Children use scripts to store info in long-term memory. Scripts are schemas for routine events and interactions. They thrive under routines and typically remember more in their routine.
Limitations to Children’s Memory
Children are easily distracted, which makes them more forgetful. They also don’t make an effort to encode information and oftentimes have encoding failures.
Errors in Child Testimony
Children are more susceptible to memory distortion than adults. They often follow the misinformation effect, which is when you disrupt memory due to influences, like a specific question, which in turn causes the children to change their memory to fit the question. They also have a strong desire for adult approval and fit their memory to what they know the adults would like.
Attributes of Effective Preschools
Preschools should balance their attention between all three domains of development (physical, cognitive, and social). They should encourage active learning and exploration. Preschools should also minimize teaching academic content, because the purpose of the program is to prepare for school, not to be school.
Short-Term Results of Head-Start Programs
Short-term effects include increased intellectual performance, physical health, family interactions, and social behavior.
Long-Term Results of Head-Start Programs
Long-term effects include less likelihood of needing special education, less likelihood to be held back in school, fewer school absences, and more likely to graduate high school/college.
Challenges that Head-Start Programs Face
These programs have to deal with government funding cuts and monetary decisions. There are also family troubles involved with students. Finding teachers can be challenging since the pay is so little, but the work can be hard and time-consuming.
Measurement of Moral Judgement Maturity
Children at this age will make the distinction between right and wrong based on what they will or will not get in trouble for. This is analyzed by responses to sociomoral dilemmas, such as the Heinz Dilemma. This dilemma proposes an impossible question, regarding two immoral choices such as stealing or causing a loved one to die. The response of the child is what is analyzed, where people focus on WHY the child said what they did.
Cross-cultural Differences in Parenting Style Effectiveness
The effectiveness of parenting styles can vary cross-culturally. For example, Asian and Black Americans have large success in authoritative parenting. Asian Americans have a collectivist culture in which they value respect for elders and strictness. Black Americans often must cope with their children’s behavior in this way. It all depends on how behaviors are perceived and if they are perceived as well-intentioned or problematic.
Correlational Research of Parenting Styles
We should be careful when interpreting correlational relationships between parenting behavior and child behavior. This is because child behavior can determine the type of parenting style used as well.
Birth Order
For a very large part, birth order does not cause any significant changes in behavior. The one and only thing it does is the oldest child is usually achievement-oriented, cooperative, and adult-oriented. All of this is just a prediction.
Authoritarian Parenting and Results
These parents are demanding and unresponsive. They are strict and expect a lot, with not much in return.
Children usually become passive and withdrawn or wild rule breakers. This could be because children will either submit to their parents and grow up submissive, or they will rebel and grow up rebellious.
Permissive Parenting and Results
These parents are un-demanding and very responsive. They are usually pushovers with no rules.
Children usually become attention-seeking and egotistic. This is because they were taught to be that way by their parents.
Uninvolved Parenting and Results
These parents are unresponsive and undemanding. They are usually absent from a child’s life.
Children usually become rebellious and wild, or timid and withdrawn. This could be because they have not had the guidance to keep them in check, and maybe could be due to the fact that they don’t have a support system at home and are timid around people because they never were guided through social skill development.
Authoritative Parenting and Results
These parents are demanding and responsive. They are deemed the parent who does it all. They also practice inductive discipline, which is when rules are set and explained. Rules are then followed, and punishments are explained.
Children usually are cooperative, and responsible, and have fewer behavior issues. This could be because they had good role models as parents and developed normally.
Gender Differences in Play - Girls
Girls typically play in a make-believe type of fashion. Girls violate the gender stereotype norm more than boys do, most likely because it is seen as powerful to be manly. Girls play in smaller groups and are exclusive to only playing with other girls. This is because they see it as having power and control. Girls play with suggestive communication. Girls participate in rational aggression (the manipulation of social dynamics to hurt someone).
Gender Differences in Play - Boys
Boys play in a rough-and-tumble fashion. Boys play in larger groups and invite both genders into their groups. Boys use more commands when playing. Boys are also seen as more aggressive players and participate in both verbal/overt and relational aggression.
Gender Similarities in Play
They both choose toys that are associated with gender stereotypes. Additionally, they use the same types of conflict. They may have instrumental conflict, which is when it isn’t personal. They also may have hostile conflicts, which is when it is personal.
Development of Social Play
Solitary: Children play on their own and don’t initiate interactions. This stage is prevalent during infancy.
Onlooker: Children watch other kids play without joining in, which hints towards social interaction. This occurs around 3 years of age.
Parallel: Children play near another kid and partake in the same activity without interacting. This is prevalent during early childhood.
Associative: Children play alongside someone, interact with them, and do the same activity, but not with a shared goal.
Cooperative: Children are fully immersed in play with each other and have the same goal.
Brain Development in Middle Childhood
There is continued myelination and pruning, especially in the frontal lobe. In addition, there is increased hemispheric lateralization.
Differences in Gender Body Types in Middle Childhood
At this age, boys and girls have almost identical body types, which become longer and fuller. If there are individual differences, they become more obvious.
Pattern of Body Growth in Middle Childhood
Motor skill growth slows down as children become accustomed to their new body proportions. There are some small gender differences in preparation for adolescence, where boys develop an upper body and girls develop hip flexibility. We also see body insecurity beginning in girls at this age.
Growing Pains in Middle Childhood
This is a phenomenon where children experience an aching sensation in their legs with no apparent cause. This is normal and not concerning, and the symptoms are the things that are treated.
Fitness and Nutrition Recommendations in Middle Childhood
It is recommended for children to get at least 60 minutes of moderate to intense exercise per day. Their nutritional needs follow the food pyramid, and the types of food they are eating are more important than their calorie intake.
Challenges to Fitness and Nutrition in Middle Childhood
This can be challenging to reach because junk and fast food are advertised greatly in our world today. Some families don’t have enough time to cook, so they always eat out. Exercise is tricky because kids sit all day at school, then sit to do homework, and usually by that time, need to get to bed.
Risks of Obesity in Middle Childhood
Risks include social discrimination, heart and respiratory disease, type 2 diabetes, and joint problems.
Individual/Group Differences in Childhood Obesity
Exercise and sports participation: This can be due to a family having little money, little time, or no means of transportation.
Sedentary habits: this could be due to the curriculum at school or possibly the neighborhood that a child lives in.
Food preparation and availability: Families on a budget may buy the cheapest option, which often is the unhealthiest option.
Socioeconomic status: This affects the type of house, neighborhood, food, and everything else that we talked about previously.
Reversibility in Concrete Operational Stage
Understanding that certain actions can be reversible.
Decentration in Concrete Operational Stage
Conservation: Children now can understand that things may take a different form but are ultimately still the same.
Physical perspective-taking: The answers and process of arriving at a conclusion after being able to take the perspective on someone else changes, and children now can do this. Children with different educational backgrounds may still continue to fail at this until they receive a specific curriculum during or after middle childhood.
Importance of Concrete and Familarv Activities in the Concrete Operational Stage
The logic of children is still tied to their concrete and familiar situations, which is known as kid logic. They tend to make conclusions based on what they know, for example, that since an airplane gets smaller in the sky, so do the people in it.
Features of Social Perspective-Taking
The ability to view self from another person’s perspective.
Understanding that others can also take a second-person perspective of themselves.
The ability to coordinate different perspectives.
The ability to understand that there is not always one correct perspective.
These are all gained in the concrete operational stage.
Importance of Active and Constructivist Approaches to Learning
These approaches are when a child constructs their own learning. It helps a child remember things better because it is hands-on.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is when children work together to practice and learn material. Each child provides scaffolding to each other.
Discovery Learning
Discovery learning is when a child discovers a concept for themselves during an activity.
Generative Learning
Generative learning is after learning a concept, an assignment is given that helps students generate new ideas/skills.
The Phonics Approach of Teaching Reading
The phonics approach is when children are taught the sounds that phonemes make and have them sound out words using those sounds.
Some advantages include being supported by science, the analytical, bottom-up approach fits the cognitive learning style of the children, and children can match the words they know by sound to the paper version.
Some disadvantages include the fact that some letter sounds are not consistent and that the instructional materials can be boring, which then will teach children that reading is boring.
The Whole Language Approach to Teaching Reading
The whole language approach is when you use context clues to guess what the words say.
Some advantages include more engaging reading materials, students may begin to read earlier, and it may be more inclusive to neurodivergent students.
Some disadvantages include the fact that it is not well supported by science, it can be overwhelming because it is a top-bottom way of learning, and it results in lower reading scores on standardized tests.
Scoring of the WISC Test
It is scored using a standardized system, which means that the median score will be the most achieved score (100). It is usually an online test, so it is scored by a point system.
Types of Items on the WISC
Some things that are tested include analytical, practical, verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. It does not test creativity, empathy, or music.
Predictive Validity of the WISC Test
The only predictive power that these tests have is the prediction of how well students will do in school. It tells educators who will need extra support. The scores are unstable before elementary school but stabilize after. It accounts for 36% of the variation in academics.
Influence of Environment and Experience on IQ
A student’s environment can positively or negatively impact scores. Demographic or direct events can potentially shut students out of opportunities to be in gifted programs that offer extra things. If a student has more than six risk factors, they seem to rebound in IQ scores.
Tourette’s Syndrome
Children will experience verbal and/or physical tics. It is more common in males than in females. Tics don’t emerge until middle childhood. The frequency and severity of the tics tend to decrease with age. Some people with Tourette’s can have OCD or ADHD. One way to support these children is to provide them with outlets involving things they enjoy. This may provide them with a space to flow and relax. They can also take medication that might help a little bit. It is also an option for the students to go to therapy.
Dyslexia
A neurologically based and genetic learning disability manifested as severe difficulties in reading, spelling, and writing. Presented by moving or distorted letters, but other experiences vary between people. background noise may be ra because it requires 5 times more attention to focus. Coping strategies include a quiet environment, extra time, and printed materials in an alternate form.
Autism
The autism spectrum is meant to reflect that patterns of behaviors may differ, not the severity of autism. The amygdala, which processes emotions, is larger by 13% in autistic people. There is sometimes an IQ difference. Symptoms show by the end of infancy and severity is ranked by 3 levels. 1/150 children have autism, and it is more likely in males than females (girls have more self-regulation skills). Support depends on each case, but may include alternate communication methods, art therapy, therapy animals, and occupational therapy.
