Module 11: Infancy and Childhood

Question 1

Maturation

Answer 1

• Biological growth processes that enable orderly change in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
• Babies first stand, then walk
• Maturation (nature) sets the basic course of development; experience (nurture) adjusts it

Question 2

Brain Development

Answer 2

• In womb, brain formed nerve cells fast (one-quarter million per minute)
• Day born —-> had the most brain cells you would ever have, but the wiring among these cells was immature
• After birth, neural networks have growth spurt (branched and linked in patterns that would allow you to talk, walk, and remember).
• 3 - 6 —-> most rapid brain growth in frontal lobes (rational planning)
• Use it or lose it pruning process shut down unused links

Question 3

Critical period

Answer 3

Optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development

Question 4

Brain maturation and infant memory

Answer 4

• Most of us consciously recall little before age 4, but the brain is still processing and storing information
• As children mature, infantile amnesia goes away

Question 5

Cognition

Answer 5

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 6

Schema

Answer 6

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Question 7

Assimilation

Answer 7

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

• Simple schema for dog —-> toddler may call all four-legged animals dogs

Question 8

Accommodation

Answer 8

Adapting our current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information.

• Child learns that original dog schema is too broad —-> accommodates by refining the category

Question 9

Piaget’s Theory

Answer 9

Believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting with it.

Question 10

Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 10

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

• Take in the world through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping

Question 11

Object permanence

Answer 11

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

• Infants lack this
• By about 8 months, infants begin remembering things no longer seen

Question 12

Preoperational stage

Answer 12

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

• Represent things with words or images
• Can’t perform mental operations (imagining an action and mentally reversing it)

Question 13

Conservation

Answer 13

The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of the objects.

• Before age 6, children lack this concept

Question 14

Egocentrism

Answer 14

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.
- When pre-schoolers block your view of the T.V., they assume you see what they see

Question 15

Theory of Mind

Answer 15

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.

• Preschoolers, although egocentric, develop ability to infer others’ mental states
• Children with autism have a hard time understanding anothers’ state of mind differs from their own.

Question 16

Concrete operational stage

Answer 16

In Piaget’s theory, the state of cognitive development (7 to 11) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

• Begin to grasp conservation —-> can mentally pour milk back and forth between glasses of different shape

Question 17

Formal operational stage

Answer 17

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning at about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Question 18

Piaget vs. Lev Vygotsky

Answer 18

Piaget —-> how mind grows through interaction with physical environment
Vygotsky —-> how mind grows through interaction with social environment

Question 19

Scaffold

Answer 19

A framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking.

• By giving children new words and mentoring them, parents, teachers, and other children provide a scaffold

Question 20

Age and key milestones of sensorimotor stage

Answer 20

• Birth to nearly 2 years old
• Object permanence
• Stranger anxiety

Question 21

Age and key milestones of preoperational stage

Answer 21

• About 2 to 6 or 7 years old
• Pretend play
• Egocentrism

Question 22

Age and key milestones of concrete operational stage

Answer 22

• About 7 to 11 years
• Conservation
• Mathematical transformations

Question 23

Age and key milestones of formal operational stage

Answer 23

• About 12 through adulthood
• Abstract logic
• Potential for mature moral reasoning

Question 24

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Answer 24

A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixed interests and repetitive behaviors.

Question 25

Stranger anxiety

Answer 25

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months.
- Have schemas for familiar faces

Question 26

Attachment

Answer 26

An emotional tie with another person shown in young children by their seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress in separation.

• Humans are attached to soft and warm parents that rock, feed, and pat

Question 27

Imprinting

Answer 27

The process by which animals form strong attachments during early life
- Ducklings imprint, children do not

Question 28

Secure attachment

Answer 28

• In mother’s presence, play comfortably and happily explore new environment
• Mother leaves —-> they become distressed, when she returns they are fine

Question 29

Insecure attachment

Answer 29

• Anxiety or avoidance of trusting relationships
• Less likely to explore their surroundings and may cling to mother
• Leaves they either cry loudly and remain upset or seem indifferent to her departure or return

Question 30

Temperament

Answer 30

A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
- Some babies are difficult and some are easy

Question 31

Basic trust

Answer 31

According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
- Securely attached children approach life with this

Question 32

Anxious attachment

Answer 32

Constantly crave acceptance, but remain alert to signs or rejection

Question 33

Avoidant attachment

Answer 33

Experience discomfort getting close to others and use avoidant strategies to maintain distance

Question 34

Authoritarian

Answer 34

• Parents that are coercive

- Impose rules and expect obedience

Question 35

Permissive

Answer 35

• Parents that are unrestraining

- Make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment

Question 36

Authoritative

Answer 36

• Parents that are confrontative
• Both demanding and responsive
• Exert control by setting rules but encourage open discussion and allow exceptions