PSYCH 250 Flashcards
What are 3 reasons as to why we should study child development?
- To improve ones own child-rearing
- To help society promote the well-being of children in general
- To better understand human nature.
What are two positive ways to approach your child’s bad behaviour?
- Using sympathy
2. By helping them find alternative ways to express their anger
What did Plato believe in regards to child development?
- longterm welfare of society depended on the proper raising of children
- view the rearing of boys especially challenging for parents
- emphasized self-control and discipline as the most important goal of education
- believed children have innate knowledge
What did Aristotle believe in regards to child development?
- longterm welfare of society depended on proper raising of children
- believed discipline was necessary, but more concentrated on fitting child-rearing to the needs of individual children
- believed all knowledge comes from experience
- believe that an infants mind is a “tabula rasa”
What does tabula rasa mean?
- means blank slate
- Aristotle used this to describe infants mind
What is a genome?
Is each person’s or organisms complete set of hereditary information
Define epigenetics:
Is the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment
Define methylation:
A biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is involved in regulating reactions to stress
What is a stage theory?
Is approaches that propose that development involves a series of discontinuous, age-related phases
What percent of all siblings (including fraternal twins) share and differ in their genes?
50/50
Define Internal Validity:
Is the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing
Define external validity:
Is the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research
What are 3 ways researchers can collect data on children?
- Interviews
- Naturalistic observations
- Structured observations
What is a structured interview?
Is where all participants are asked the same set of questions
What is a clinical interview?
Is where questions are adjusted in accordance with the answers the interviewee provides
Define Structured Observation:
- where researchers design a setting that will elicit behaviour that is relevant to their hypothesis and then observe the differences
- advantage: it excludes a vast number of environmental variables as the setting is exactly the same for all participants
What is the direction-of-causation problem?
Is the concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable
What is the third-variable problem?
Concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influence by some third variable
What is a microgenetic design?
Is a method of study in which the same children are studied repeatedly over a short period
What action has been known to be one of the earliest signs of a child understanding another’s mind?
Pointing or responding to pointing
What percent of parents still spank their children?
50-66% of parents still spank their children
What did John Locke believe in regards to child development?
- He saw children as tabula rasa’s
- advocated first installing discipline and then gradually increasing the child’s freedom (this is a nurture perspective)
How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau view child development?
-argued that parents and society should give maximum freedom from the beginning (nature perspective)
Describe Darwin’s theory of evolution :
- developed baby biography (diary) as a method of studying children
- this theory still influences research in modern child development in which he attempts to understand where human capacities come from
Key points to Alison Gopnik’s “why do babies think” video:
- a long time ago people believed babies were irrational and completely unaware of others
- with experiment an 18 month old baby was able to understand others dislikes and likes and give them what they want (fishy crackers over broccoli) where a 15 month old couldn’t distinguish which one the researcher wanted
- she uses one example as in how crows are smarter than chickens because chickens develop one skill and mature very quickly where a crow isn’t specifically good at anything but experiences a long childhood which is why researchers believe they are so adaptive
- she states her belief of children being more conscious than adults
- states that babies aren’t bad at paying attention but rather bad at NOT paying attention as they are absorbing so much new information at one time
From Alison Gopnik’s video what is the evolutionary relevance of childhood?
- is the chicken vs. Crow debate as the crow experiences a longer childhood and therefore results in being more adaptive than a chicken who matures quickly with knowledge of one particular skill
How much longer does a chimpanzee spend in the prenatal stage than humans?
A whole year longer
In Alison Gopnik’s video what is the developmental relevance of childhood?
- learn the skills necessary for certain ages and how to survive
- to understand the way we think we need to study our development within experience and skills
From Alison Gopnik’s video what are some insights we have learned about child development over the last 30 years?
- children are not bad at paying attention they are bad at NOT paying attention
- children use to be thought of as completely irrational and unaware of others but in all reality are aware of others wants and dislikes at 18 months
- that babies are perspective takers and try to assist you
- that you need to think about children in the way you want them to behave.
What are some complications with studying childhood development?
- children are naive and impressionable
- relies mostly on observation and therefore interpretation
- with wanting to please children may not know right from wrong
- BABIES CANT TALK.
- you need parental consent
- small sample sizes
- don’t know what occurs between tests
- children will react differently with a researcher than with their parents
- longitude research can be very expensive
- children develop at different paces
Define epigenesis:
Is the emergence of new structure and functions in the course of development
-purpose by Aristotle in the 4th century
What is the order of the biological side to development?
- Cell division
- Cell migration
- Cell differentiation
- Death
Define the cell division process:
- a.k.a Mitosis
- cell division occurs approx. 12. Hours after fertilization and results in two identical daughter cells
Define the cell migration process:
Is the movement of newly formed cells away from their point of origin
Define the cell differentiation process:
-after several cell divisions, the cells start to specialize in terms of both structure and function
Define the death process:
-is the selective death of certain cells
- also known as Apoptosis
Ex] death of cells in between the ridges in the hand plate that create our fingers
What are factors thar help determine which type of cell the given stem will become?
- Which genes are “switched” or expressed
- Cells location
- Hormones
Define what fraternal twins are:
- twins that result when two eggs happen to be released into the Fallopian tube at the same time and are fertilized by two different sperm
- have only 1/2 their genes in common
Define what identical twins are:
- twins that result from the splitting in half of the zygote, resulting in each of the two resulting zygotes having the exact same set of genes
What is the neural tube?
-is a groove formed in the top layer of differentiated cells in the embryo that eventually becomes the brain and the spinal cord
What is the amniotic sac?
- is a transparent, fluid-filled membrane that surrounds and protects the fetus
- because of this fluid the fetus is able to exercise its tiny, weak muscles relatively un effected by the effects of gravity
What is cephalocaudal development ?
-pattern of growth in which areas near the head develop earlier than areas further than the head
What is one of the earliest signs of distinct movement?
Hiccups
Define habituation:
- is a simple form of learning that involves a decrease in response to repeated or continued stimulation
What is a teratogen?
-is an external agent that can cause damage or death during prenatal development
Describe rapid-eye movement (REM):
- is an active sleep state characterized bt rapid eye movement under closed lids
- associated with dreaming within adults
- 50% of newborns total sleep tome and this decreases to 20% by 3-4 Years of age
Describe non-REM sleep:
-a quite or deep state characterized by the absence of motor activity or eye movements and regular/ slow brain waves, breathing and heart rate
What does Colic mean?
Excessive or inconsolable crying by a young infant for no apparent reason
Describe the features of a low birth weight (LBW) baby:
- has a birth weight of less than 2500 grams
- slightly more than 6% of all Canadian newborns are LBW
Define preformationsim:
-suggested miniature, preformed humans lodged inside mtoher’s egg or father’s sperm
What are gametes produced through and how many chromosomes do they contain
- produced through meiosis
- contain 23 chromosomes
Between what ages are males more likely to die than females?
15-29 years old
Describe the Travis-Willard hypothesis:
- belief that there are evolutionary mechanisms that influence male and female numbers
- believed that in bad times, it pays to have daughters over sons- as a female can always find a mate
- but in good times it’s better to have sons over daughters as mothers can invest in and produce high quality offspring
What 2 things can animal models help us enhance the understanding of human development on?
- Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
2. Existence of fetal learning (also helping the dismantling of the term “instinct”)
What is the time length and developements within each prenatal stage:
Embryo: 4 weeks: primitive heart beating and circulating of blood + arm and leg buds
Fetus:5 1/2- 8 1/2 weeks: differentiation begins in nose, mouth and palate
Fetus: 9 weeks: heart achieves basic heart structure + spine and ribs are visible + major division of the brain
Fetus: 16 weeks: movement increases with some reflexes + external genitalia is developed
Fetus: 18 weeks: greasy coating to protect skin develops
Fetus: 20 weeks: more time with head positioned downwards+ facial expressions components are present +weight gain
Fetus: 28 weeks: brain and lung development increases+ eye can experience REM movement + weight is tripled
When do spontaneous movements begin to occur ?
5 weeks after conception
What does swallowing promote?
- normal palate development
- helps in digestion system development
When does vestibular experience function occur?
Before birth
When do rest activity cycles emerge?
-emerge at 10 weeks and become stable in second half of pregnancy
what can babies learn before they are born?
-what their mothers voices sounds like
-learn the tones of the language most often spoke
-
How many fetuses do not make it to birth?
- 1/3 don’t survive till birth
- 2/3 of those rare are miscarriages before the pregnancy was clinically detectable
What is the prenatal sensitive period?
3-9 weeks when major organs are developing
Define sensation:
Is the processing of basic information from the external world by the sensory receptors in the sense organs
What are cones?
-light sensitive neurons tat are highly concentrated in the fovea (central region of the retina)
-involved in seein fine details and colour
-
Describe object expansion:
-is a depth cue in which an object occluded increasingly more of the background, indicating that the object is approaching
What is binocular disparity?
Si the difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signal being sent to the brain
Describe stereopsis:
Is the process by which the visual cortex combines the differing neural signals caused by binocular disparity, resulting in the perception of depth
Describe monocular depth cues:
-the perceptual cues of depth (such as relative size and interpretation) that can be precieved by one eye alone
Define intermodal perception
- the combining of information from two or more sensory systems
Describe the stepping reflex:
- a neonatal reflex in which an infant lifts first one leg and then the other in a coordinated pattern like walking
Describe affordances:
The possiblities for action offered by object and situations
Define classical-conditioning:
Is a form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus that evokes a particular reflexive response
-first discovered by Ivan Pavlov within his dog experiments
Define operant conditioning:
-learning the relation between one’s own behaviour and the consequences that result from it
Define positive reinforcement :
- a reward that reliably follows a behaviour and increases the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated
Describe the violation-of-expectancy procedure:
A procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise of interest if it violates something the infant knows or assumes to be true.
What sense is least developed at birth?
Visual perception
At what age do infants have similar colour perception as adults?
4 months
At what age do infants recognize melodies over individual notes?
5 months
Why do movements decrease over the prenatal stages?
There is less room to move around
What are 3 reasons to study motor development:
- Used as a yardstick to see if infants are developing on time
- Motor behavior is integral to psychology
- Is related to perception and requires coordination
What are 3 adaptive reflexes infants have
- Rooting
- Swallowing
- Sucking
At what ages to babies start crawling, walking and climbing stairs?
- 10 months they begin to crawl
- 1 year they being walking
- 2 year they begin climbing stairs
What is the major challenge in developmental psychology?
BABIES CANT TALK
What is a rich interpretation?
Is an adult like interpretation
What is a lean like interpretation?
Is an animal-like interpretation with less cognitive attributions
What 4 things do we share a portion of our genes with?
- bears
- barnacles
- beans
- bacteria
Define genotype:
Is the genetic material an individual inherits
Define phenotype:
Is an observable expression of the genotype, including both body characteristics and behaviour
What’s so chromosome?
Molecules of DNA that transmit genetic information
What is DNA:
- deoxyribonucleic acid
- molecules that carry all the biochemical instructions involved in the formation and functioning of an organism
What are genes:
- sections of chromosomes that are the basic unit of heredity in all living things
- make up only 2% of the human genome
What is an alleles?
- two or more different forms of a gene
- 1/3 of human genes have two or more different forms
- they influence the same trait or characteristic, but contribute to different developmental outcomes
What does homozygous mean :
Having two of the same allele for a trait