psych 315 - M1 Flashcards
1
Q
Stages of Development
A
- Infancy (0-3)
- Early Childhood (3-6)
- Middle Childhood (6-11)
- Adolescence (11-19)
- Early Adulthood (20-25)
- Adulthood (25+)
2
Q
Developmental Psychology - and why we study it
A
- developmental psychology: the study of change and stability throughout the lifespan
- provides a framework for understanding important phenomena
- raises crucial questions about human nature
- leads to a better understanding of children
3
Q
Domains of development
A
- Physical
Social and emotional - Cognitive
- separate, but still interconnected
4
Q
Major Themes in Development
A
- Nature v Nurture
- Developmental Changes
- continuous v discontinuous
- mechanisms: biological, experiences, sensitive periods - Individual differences and context – different choices continue to differentiate us
5
Q
Ways to gather data
A
- Naturalistic observation
- Systematic observation
- Self / Other Report
- Physiological Measures
6
Q
What is naturalistic observation?
A
- observing behaviour in a natural setting
- time sampling: record all behaviours in a pre-determined time period
- event sampling: record behaviour every time behaviour of interest happens
- very crucial to have operationalized concepts
- gets real world behaviour
- a lot is happening, and is difficult to control
7
Q
What is systematic observation?
A
- researcher sets up the situation to evoke behaviour
- great for unusual behaviours
- children may be shy or unwilling to engage
8
Q
What is self / other report?
A
- surveys, interviews, tests, etc
- great insight for inner experiences
- children may not be able to fill out questions
- memory difficulties
- easily influenced
9
Q
What is physiological measures?
A
- relationship with physiological measures
- does not require language / behaviour
- can be frightening
10
Q
Correlational v Experimental Design
A
- relationship v cause-effect
- measure as it is v manipulate
- strong-weak, pos-neg v causal
11
Q
What is a longitudinal design?
A
Measures the same participants across time at different ages
12
Q
What is a cross-sectional design?
A
Measures different participants at the same time at different ages
13
Q
What is a sequential design?
A
Measures different participants across time at different ages
14
Q
What is a microgenetic design?
A
Measures same participants in a short period of closely-spaced sessions
15
Q
Challenges in doing research with children
A
- ethical issues
- cooperation
- selection issues (may not be representative)
- measurement equivalency (variables look different at differing ages)
- cause of change (by age or another variable?)
16
Q
Piaget’s Central Tenets
A
- children are mentally active from birth
- children are constructivists: scientists who create their own learning with intrinsic motivation
- sources of continuity: assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium
- sources of discontinuity: each stage has accomplishments and gaps
17
Q
Piaget’s Assimilation and Accommodation
A
- understanding of the world is organized by schemas
- assimilation: new information is viewed through existing schema
- accommodation: schema is adapted to accommodate for new information that did not fit
- equilibration: to balance assimilation and accommodation to create a stable understanding
18
Q
What are Piaget’s stages?
A
- Sensorimotor stage: 0-2 years
- Pre-operational stage: 2-7 years
- Concrete operational stage: 7-12 years
- Formal operational stage: 12+
19
Q
What is the Sensorimotor Stage
A
- learning about the world through senses and motor capabilities
-
(+) adapting to the environment
- (18-24mo) form enduring mental representations
- deferred imitation: repetition of people hours or days after
-
(+) object permanence
- [8-12mo] A-not-B error: search in A even after seeing it hidden in B
- [12+ mo] search for object in current location at 12+ months
- (-) ability to represent the world mentally
20
Q
What is the Pre-operational Stage?
A
- (+) Symbolic representation: pretend play, language, drawing
- (-) operations: mental representation of logical rules (i.e. mental math)
- (-) conservation
- (-) egocentricism
- (-) classification
21
Q
What is the Concrete Operational Stage?
A
- (+) mental logic about concrete things
- (+) conservation: understand that physical properties do not change despite changes in form or appearance
- centration: focus on one aspect (i.e. height)
- irreversibility: inability to mentally reserve directions (cut chocolate = have more)
- (+) egocentricism: to realize other people’s viewpoints
- (+) classification: understanding hierarchies and categories
- are there more flowers or more red flowers?
- (-) reason about abstracts or hypotheticals
22
Q
What is the Formal Operational Stage?
A
- Can reason about abstracts and hypotheticals
- Can logically examine evidence and test hypothesis
23
Q
Piaget’s Legacy
A
- his study of cognitive development inspired others, start of modern research
- accurate descriptions of child’s behaviours
- idea of ‘natural limits’ at a given age
- children as ‘scientists’
- many applications to education
24
Q
Piaget’s Weaknesses
A
- does not specify mechanisms: what leads child to think that way / shift in thinking
- overemphasis on clear-cut stages
- underestimates influences of others: only focus on child’s efforts
- may not accurately describe the child’s understanding (tests were difficult)
25
Piaget v Vygotsky
- self-discover v assisted discovery
- constructivist theory v co-constructivist theory
- discontinuous v continuous change
- universal v culturally situated
- language and thought are unrelated v language is key
26
Piaget's application in education
- learning should be _child-led_ (i.e. different stations, create own experiment)
- children learn best by _interacting with environment_ - child as scientists
27
Vygotsky's application in education
- learning through social collaboration
- **zone of proximal development:** difficult task is possible with help of skilled other
- **scaffolding**: teachers adjust level of support to fit needs (not giving more than needed)
- behaviour is controlled by other people's statements -> private speech -> internalized speech
- learn through **reciprocal or collaborative learning** (teaching one another - *jigsaw*)
28
Define theory of mind
The ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others
29
3 components of theory of mind
- understand that others have mental states, and these states guide behaviour
- understand that others' states can differ from your own
- understand that mental states can be accurate or inaccurate to reality, but can still guide behaviour
30
Classic tests to measure theory of mind
- **False belief tasks:** Sally-Anne task, Smarties Task
- 3-4 year olds will fail and answer according to reality
- 4-5 year olds will pass: understand perspective-taking, misrepresentation, diverging representations
31
Does theory of mind develop earlier that evident, and why is it not evident?
- tasks may be too hard: store info, require language, hypothetical concept, inhibition component
- age 2: can implicitly understand that people have different mental states and desires
- can show through action (understand implicitly), but cannot explicitly explain
32
Different theory of mind theories
- **theory theory:** changes in thinking occurs through experience, and updates the theory
- **simulation theory:** nurture, experience-based
- **modular theory:** brain maturation, nature-based
- other skills develop which creates theory of mind (language, executive functions)
33
Theory of mind and atypical development
- autism: severely delayed, some say is the primary cause of autism, leads back to modular theory
- deaf children with hearing parents: lack native sign language, causes delays
34
Understanding of race across development
- infant: race is a perpetual, outward category with no deeper connotations (prefers familiar face)
- 3-4 years: race is a stable characteristic (can categorize, but skin-tone based)
- 10+ years: race is a stable and informative feature of identity
- essentialism: membership results in inherent essence that makes them behave in certain ways
- essentialism develops faster for children from
- marginalized groups
- less exposed to other ethnicities
- has salience of other ethnicities
35
Types of attitudes towards race
- **explicit**: an attitude a person consciously expresses and can report
- **implicit**: attitudes that influence a person's feelings or beliefs at an unconscious level
36
Effect of explicit attitudes
- dominant group: in-group positivity + out-group negativity (sees decline as you grow older - socialization, less egocentric, social desirability)
- marginalized groups: in-group negativity, out-group positivity (as adults, see increase for in-group preference) `
37
Effect of implicit attitudes
- dominant groups: show in-group bias in IAT
- marginalized groups: no effect
- preferences for high-status over low-status emerge early in childhood, and remain stable -- will be stronger for homogenous communities
38
How is intergroup bias formed in development
- formed through
- [1] in-group bias
- [2] social norms
- dominant groups: both factors build on each other
- marginalized groups: factors counteract each other
39
Strategies to reduce implicit bias
- personal contact with out-group members
- encounter positive examples of out-group members
40
Gonzalez et al (2017)'s paper
whether children's implicit racial attitudes can be reduced, and whether there are developmental differences in capacity to reduce it
- done by showing counter-stereotypical exemplars
- result: can reduce implicit racial bias for older children (10), but not younger (7)
- older children have more cognitive flexibility
- younger children may not spontaneously categorize by race, and often prioritize other categories over race
41
Nature v Nurture in language
- Nature: language is innately human -- acquired everywhere, can learn complex language rapidly without much training
- Nurture: learning requires experience and exposure, and has a sensitive critical period
42
Aspects of communicative competence?
- Private speech
- Conversations
- Language Adaptation
43
Private speech
- helps drive thinking -- to better understand and process information
- helps with self-regulation and planning (used more often in difficult tasks)
- process: speech from others -> private speech -> inner speech
44
Conversations
- **turn-taking:** shows up early, already quite good at age 2
- **taking related turns:** poor in early childhood (egocentricism), steadily improves
- **repairing miscommunication:**
- 1-3 year olds will repeat failed communication
- 3-5 year olds are more likely to repair failed communication
- **giving and responding to feedback:** 3-5 year olds inconsistent in asking for clarification
45
Language adaptation
- **age 4:** can already change language depending on individual / situation (requires theory of mind)
- done through registers (style of language - marker of identity) and dialects (forms of language - tied to our identity)
- dialect example: African American English / Black English
46
How to acquire communicative competence
- requests: comprehension of indirect requests and production of requests
- different requests can have the same purpose
- should take into account context to vary requests used
47
Influences of development on communicative competence
- **gender:** feminine v masculine registers
- girls more collaborative and supportive, boys more controlling and unmitigated
- *in role play:* father more straightforward, mother more polite and indirect
- but overall, language of boys and girls are more similar than different
- **family influence:** learn structure from early interactions
- _indirect instructions:_ challenge child to think cognitively
- some members can act as "bridges" to society to pressure child to communicate more clearly to be understood
- **schools and peer influence:** opportunities for interaction with teachers as models, and peers (similar to family bridges)
48
Bilinguals
- simultaneous / crib bilinguals: learn 2 languages from birth
- sequential bilinguals: learn 1 first
- 2-4 year olds: can code-switch or code-mix based on partner
- better at detecting conversational violations from a younger age
49
Advantage of being bilingual
- better in perspective-taking
- executive functions: _better at task-switching_
- _metalinguistic abilities:_ ability to think about language
- _NOT associated with other cognitive skills_ (i.e. IQ)
50
Sign language as shaped by children
- Homesign: created by deaf children with hearing parents
- Nicaraguan sign language: developed own language after not receiving the education -- younger children from cohort 2 added complexity to language through spacial modulation
51
Gesture as a window into thoughts
- Gestures start early at 10 months old (i.e. pointing)
- Gestures can predict language ability
- # of gestures = # of vocab
- use of gestures + words = predicts complex sentences
52
How gestures influence a child's cognitive development
- _convey knowledge_ and help with communication
- helps _lighten the load_ for difficult tasks
- abstract gestures help generalize knowledge and apply them
- **gesture-speech mismatch:** child is on the _*verge* of learning_ -- seen in children more receptive and will benefit from learning
53
Novack et al (2014)'s paper
- Does gesturing promote learning because it is a physical action, or is it because it represents an abstract idea?
- Action v concrete gesture v abstract gesture
- actions result in relatively shallow understanding (= trained problems)
- gestures result in deeper, more flexible learning
- concrete gesture: intermediate understanding (= near transfer problems)
- abstract gesture: facilitates generalization (= far transfer problems)
54
Influences on Theory of Mind
- **Individual differences**
- _# of siblings_ (act as models, motivated to progress faster, observe, get rid of some hypotheticals)
- _pretend play_ (simulation theory)
- _parenting_ (talking about mental states, explaining)
- **Language**
- *doing better at language tasks = doing better at theory of mind tasks*
- bilingual children are better in tasks (executive function, brain maturation, learning 2 perspectives)
- **Executive function**
- **Autism**
55
Vygotsky
- **zone of proximal development**: range of tasks are too difficult to do on your own, but possible with the help of a skilled other
- mechanisms to learn through *social collaboration*
- [1] **scaffolding**: teachers 'adjust' level of support to fit learner's needs
- verbal instruction: *Turkey* > US > Guatemala > India
- gestures: *Guatemala* > Turkey > India > US
- gazes or touches: India and Guatemala
- [2] language: most important tool -- **private speech**
- child's behaviour controlled by others' statement > own private speech > internalized speech
