notes final Flashcards
class 6 topics
Topic: Development of language and symbol use
Symbolic Development
Human capacity for symbols
Language development
Brain & Sensitive periods
Perception
Socioeconomic status
Language
-Communication system (understood by all within a community)
-Conventionalized sounds, symbols or marks for communication
-Formal system of sounds and symbols
Human capacity for symbols
-Symbols = language and nonlinguistic (maps, print, numbers etc.)
-Symbolic capacity = creative & flexible
-Unmatched in other species
-Frees us from the present
-Allows us to speak about future, past, ideas
But how?
Prerequisites of language
-A human brain
-Exposure to language (spoken or signed)
-IDS – infant directed talk/speech
-Common across cultures (Broesch & Bryant, 2013)
-Warm tone, high exaggerated pitch, increased intonation, slower speech, exaggerated facial expressions
-Infants prefer IDS
SYMBOLS
-The capacity that sets humans apart from other species is the creative and flexible use of symbols.
-Symbols are systems for 1) representing thoughts, feelings, and knowledge 2) and communicating them to others.
generativity:
using a finite set of words to produce an infinite number of sentences and ideas
Language development
Language is spoken or signed
Comprehension precedes production
sound(phonemes- words - sentences- narratives etc.
Note – you do not need to know the common errors in language learning
Critical Debates
-Is the language learning ‘mechanism’ specific to language learning – or more general social cognitive development?
-Do other animals have language?
-Critical period for language learning?
-Is language localized in the brain?
The problem of learning language
-Must determine regularities and patterns in continuous speech sounds
SPEECH SEGMENTATION
-Problem of reference (association of words and meaning)
symbol with their reference
Social context of language learning
Intersubjectivity
-Sharing common focus of attention (not necessarily visual attn.) by two or more people
Joint attention
-Baby and parent are looking at and reacting to the same thing in the world
-(pointing)
If you want your babies to learn, talk to them!
-around 9 months
parts of Language Development
Step 1 – phonological development
-mastery of the sound system
-Includes morphemes – dog (1 morpheme) vs dogs (2 morphemes)
Step 2 – semantic development
-System for expressing meaning in a language (includes words and morphemes)
Step 3 – Syntax
-Permissible combinations of words
-E.g. Mike at the chicken vs. the chicken ate mike
Step 4 – Pragmatic development
-Knowledge of the context and how language is used
Symbolic representation
-Dual representation – something can be represented mentally in two ways. It can ‘be’ something, as well as ‘stand for something’. (ie - a real object, and a symbol.)
-Very young children have great difficulty with dual representation, as demonstrated in tasks in which a child is asked to use a scale model to locate a hidden toy in a room.
-DeLoache’s scale model task
-2.5 yr olds - failed the task
-3 yr olds - passed
-BUT – when the task did not require children to make the symbol-referent connection, even the 2.5 children passed! (in the case of the shrinking room)
the closely the reference represents the symbol the more difficult it is for the child.
Note – this is not covered in your textbook but if you have any questions, visit me during L2L or office hours
Scale Model Task
-A 3-year-old child watches DeLoache hide a miniature troll doll under a pillow in a scale model of an adjacent room.
-Successful search in actual room, indicating that she appreciates the relation between the model and room.
-Successful retrieval in the scale model where she originally observed the toy being hidden.
Infant Directed Speech (IDS)
-Motherese, babytalk
-Higher pitch
-Changes in intonation
-Affect
-Exaggerated speech and facial expressions
-Repetitive
-Also, Hyper-articulation
Infant Directed Speech
-Mother’s change their speech patterns when addressing infants and young children
-Slower speech
-Higher pitch
-Smooth exaggerated prosody
-Function
-Facilitate attention
-Modulate arousal and emotion
-Communicate intentions
-Language learning
Mono- and Bi- lingual language development
-Critical period for language development < 5 years
-Evidence with ‘Genie’ and also brain damaged patients
-Benefits of bilingual learning outweigh the costs!
-Benefits – cognitive development
-Costs – lag in language development, but catch up.
Hart & Risley
-Studied 42 families, various SES backgrounds
-Examined parent-child interactions
-Quantity of utterances to the child
-The authors averaged the number of words children from different backgrounds, heard per hour
-200 words per hour (low SES)
4-000 words per hour (high SES)
what is the 30 million word gap?
A linear projection of the gap in language exposure indicated that children from families on welfare heard approximately 30 million fewer words over the first four years of life, compared to their peers from families of higher socio-economic backgrounds
class 9 emotional development and attachment
what is an emotion?
felling that we get when we are stimulated
6 basic emotions
what we express is filtered by our cognition
process and develop of emotion?
The Development of Emotions in Childhood
Key components:
-Neural responses involved in emotions
-Physiological factors, including heart, breath rate, and hormone levels
-Subjective feelings
-Cognitions or perceptions responses and subjective feelings
-Desire to take action, including desire to escape, approach, or change people or things in the environment
-Expressive behavior or cognitive interpretations of feeling state
Debates
-Relative importance of each component depends on theoretical perspective
-Innate vs. learned
-What is present throughout development and when!
-Research supports both perspectives to some degree, and no one theory has emerged as definitive.
Major Theories
-Darwin – 1872
Discrete/differential emotions theory
-Srouge
Joy/pleasure
Anger/frustration
Wariness/fear
-then, cognitions and social experiences lead to further within category distinctions and more complex forms
Discrete Emotions Theory
Argues that:
-Emotions are innate and are discrete from one another from very early in life
-Each emotion is packaged with a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions
-emotions aren’t on a continuum
The Functionalist Approach
-Emphasizes the role of the environment in emotional development
-Proposes that the basic function of emotions is to promote action toward achieving a goal
-Maintains that emotions are not discrete from one another and vary somewhat based on the social environment
All agree
Cognition and experience shape emotional development
Emotion development beginning in Infancy
-Social smiles
Infant smiles in response to social interaction
2 months (4-10 w)
-Still-Face (Tronick et al.)
Infants
Emotion milestones in first year
0-2 mom social smiles and generalized destress
2 months social smiles In response to human interaction
3-4 months tickle laughs smiling in response to play or enjoyable activity
7 months familiar vs unfamiliar wariness change to fear, fear of strangers
8 months separation anxiety, fear of strangers decreasing after 2 years
6-12 mon unexpected events funny
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
-EI is a better predictor than IQ of how well people will do in life, especially in their social lives.
-Mischel (1988)
Preschoolers’ abilities to delay gratification were found to predict their social, emotional, and academic competence many years later.
The Development of Emotional Regulation
-What is emotional regulation?
-Process of initiating, inhibiting, or modulating internal feeling states, emotion-related physiological processes, and emotion-related cognitions or behaviours in the service of accomplishing one’s goals.
TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS
Eisenberg on Emotion Regulation
- Recognizing
- Controlling
Self-Conscious (Secondary) Emotions: Embarrassment and Pride
Self-conscious emotions
Involves feelings such as embarrassment, pride, guilt, and shame that relate to sense of self and consciousness of others‘ reactions to us
15 to 24 months of age, some children start to show embarrassment when they are made the center of attention.
Situations likely to induce self-conscious emotions in children vary somewhat across cultures.
Temperament
Individual differences in emotion, activity level, and attention that are exhibited across contexts and that are present from infancy and thus thought to be genetically based
(e.g. different reactions to the same situation)
Identifying the Emotions of Others
-The first step in the development of emotional knowledge is the recognition of different emotions in others.
-By 4 to 7 months, infants can distinguish certain emotional expressions, such as happiness and surprise
-At 8 to 12 months, children demonstrate social referencing
Social Referencing
By 8-12 months, infants use the social expressions of others to modify or alter their behavior in an uncertain situation.
Attachment
Defining attachment
Historical trajectory of the concept
Measurements and evidence
Cross-cultural validity
What is attachment?
An emotional bond with a specific person that is enduring across space and time.
Infant attachment
-Extended period of dependency
-Allows for social bond (and social learning, communication)
-Caregiver responsiveness – timely, appropriate, responding to infant bids
Sensitive parenting
Responsive
Timely
Appropriate
-In infancy, this is specific:
Contingency
Mirroring
Infant directed speech
How does the early caregiver-infant relationship shape later development?: Historical overview
Observations of children in orphanages
Video observations of children in orphanages (Spitz, 1946)
Harry Harlow
bowlbys attachment theory
Mary aisnworth
Isolation (lack of sufficient bond)
-Physical care & nutrition is insufficient
-Institutional care in the first years of life typically:
-hinders optimal social, emotional and cognitive development
Evidence:
Orphanages, Renee Spitz (1930’s and 40’s)
Refugee children (WWII), Bowlby (1953)
Romanian Orphanage & adoptions, Ames (1990’s)
