Prelim 1 - 3/5 Flashcards
Was Williams James was correct in saying that at birth, infants experience the world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion”?
No, because infants only have partially functioning sensory systems, limiting the sensory input they receive at birth.
Sensory-motor coordination (e.g. hearing and seeing, or seeing and reaching) can facilitate the development of sophisticated cognitive abilities. Evidence for this idea comes from:
The sticky mittens experiment
In the blastocyst, what causes the development of the neural tube?
Physical constraints emerging from rapidly dividing cells + information coded in the genes
Which of the following supports probabilistic epigenesis?
Bidirectional influences of genes and their products + during the germinal period of human embryological development, the specialization of cells is shaped by cell-cell exchanges of proteins + the presence of environmental information from parents, places, and peers that organizes development
Sapolsky described a longitudinal study of the role of the 5-HTT gene in depression. What did the researchers find as a predictor of people developing depression?
One version of the 5-HTT gene made people vulnerable to developing depression, and, when paired with a traumatic childhood event, people had an increased risk of developing depression
Chickens’ prenatal movements in the egg facilitate the flexibility of their joints - this is an example of what?
Activity-dependent developmental processes
T/F: Prenatal human development is always characterized by additive, progressive events
False
T/F: A long period of immature behavior facilitates the development of flexible intelligence
True
What is a developmental niche?
The fit between an organisms’ capacities and stimulation available in the environment, which impact their “occupation” at a given point in development.
Rats engage in nipple-seeking shortly after birth by using their mother’s amniotic fluid as a guide. How are they able to do this so soon after they are born, despite being naive and helpless in all other ways?
Exposure to their mothers’ amniotic fluid in their prenatal environment makes it familiar to them once they are born, and they have an olfactory preference for it+ genes code for prenatal olfactory capabilities and sensitivities which enable rats to perceive the scent of their prenatal environment before they are born.
Relative to rat pups on earth, rat pups that gestated in space had:
Deficits in geotaxis
In Gottlieb’s experiments on species recognition in ducklings, he found that ducklings would not learn a preference for their mother’s calls unless they experienced in ovo auditory exposure to both their own vocalizations and the sounds of their siblings vocalizing in ovo. Which of Gottlieb’s roles of experience is this?
Induction
At six months, infants reared an ambient Japanese linguistic environment can perceive the difference between English /r/ and /l/, but by 12 months they have lost that ability. However, twelve-month-old infants rearing in an ambient English environment still distinguish /r/ from /l/. Which role of experience is this?
Maintenance
Hart and Risley found that children from high socioeconomic status (SES) families hear approximately 30 million more words in their early years than those from lower SES families. The children who heard more words learned language faster and had better language performance later in life. Which role of experience is this?
Facilitation (both achievement + terminal level)
During birth, catecholamines increase dramatically, protecting babies from hypoxia. Is this an example of ontogenetic adaptation?
Yes, because this is a discontinuous adaptation for a specific challenge at a specific time.
What is a proximate explanation for mallard chicks knowing their mother’s assembly call soon after hatching?
Chicks have heard their own vocalizations and the vocalizations of their siblings in ovo, which helps them build a tonotopic map of their species-specific sounds.
When pregnant women repeatedly read “And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street” during the third trimester, their infants, soon after being born,
changed their sucking IBI to hear their mothers (over an unfamiliar female) reading the Mulberry Street story.
According to Gottlieb, experience…
is equivalent to stimulation.
T/F: The finding that 2-day-olds from an ambient English linguistic environment prefer female English over female Spanish is evidence of an ontogenetic adaptation.
False
Taken together, the studies of prenatal learning in human neonates show that:
neonates prefer familiar sources of auditory stimulation.
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of reflexes? Learned, automatic, simple, stereotyped
Learned
