Psych Main - Development Flashcards
Prenatal Development
Zygote –> Germinal Stage –> Embryo –> Fetus
Examples of Rapid Neurogenesis interacting with Pre-natal Environment
- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
2. Auditory Preferences (DeCaspar & Fife, 1980)
Mennella et al. 2001
Prenatal and Postnatal Flavour Learning
- Asked pregnant women to drink carrot juice 4 days a week during last 3 weeks of pregnancy.
- At 5-6 months after birth, when infants began eating solid Food, they reacted more positively to cereal prepared with carrot juice
as opposed to water (they ate more and made less negative faces when eating it
Xu and Spelke (2000)
Dots study. Used infant gaze Habituation (boredom) vs. Dishabituation (excitement) when showed more numerous dots. Only if the difference was significant though e.g. 8–>14 but not 8–>10. Also shows that children have analogue magnitude from a very young age.
Woodward (1998)
Violation of Expectations study. Hand grabs either a teddy or ball. Infants stared longer when the hand grabbed a new object then when it switched sides.
Pascalis et al. (2002)
Showed that children have a preference for looking at human faces vs. other stimuli. This happens less so >3 months old and are better at differentiating monkey faces compared to older children
Rich vs. Impoverished Interpretations of data
Rich = e.g. child's mind is very adult like and has higher understanding etc. Impoverished = e.g. children's brains are simple and there is always a lower-thinking explanation to why they've displayed a particular behaviour
Jean Piaget
- Genetic Epistemology (Nature (a little) + Nurture)
- Sensory-motor –> Quasi-scientific/Pre-Operational –> Concrete Operational –> Formal Operational
- Stage changes (looking at errors)
- Equilibration (Assimilation fail –> Disequilibrium –> Accommodation –> Equilibrium)
- Object permanence, A-not-B error (hiding objects studies)
- Egocentricity
Criticism of Piaget
- Vague in some aspects
- Competence vs. Performance?
Baillargeon, Spelke & Wasserman (1985)
Habituation to a draw-bridge. A box is placed behind + 2 events: 1. bridge hits the box and stops, 2. bridge continues to go all the way. More surprised by impossible event. Children might have Object permanence?
McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974)
Teddy shuffled coins. Children did better in deciding whether the rows are identical compared with original studies. Therefore demands of the task/experiment layout affect results and children are actually smarter?
Lev Vygotsky
- Social contribution to development
- Importance of language and cultural tools
- Zone of proximal development (difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help.)
- Implicit vs. Explicit Scaffolding (e.g. Motherese vs. Tutor)
Miller and Stigler (1987)
Numerical development. Chinese vs. American. 4-5-6 year olds.
Bandura (1961, 1977)
Bobo Dolls. Observational learning. Vicarious Punishment & Selective imitation.
Koenig et al. (2004)
3-4 year olds evaluate models for trustworthiness. More likely to copy a model they trust. Selective Imitation.
Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
Babies at hospitals. Imitation of facial expressions.
Meltzoff (1988)
14-month olds will imitate a complex action after a 1 week delay. Forehead pressing against a box to switch on light.
Gergely et al. (2002)
Hands free vs, Hands occupied turning the light box. Imitation more powerful in the hands free (as it shows specifically not to use the hands)
Overimitation (Lyons et al. 2011)
Children tend to imitate even the actions that aren’t necessary for a certain objective. But only if they think they do it intentionally. .
Harlow and Harlow
Monkeys in isolation. Importance of a care giver. Cloth vs. Feeding mother.
Bowlby
- Infants act to gain security from their caregiver (Crying, Smiling etc.)
- Caregiver supports explorations + Separation anxiety.
- Internal Working Model
Ainsworth
- Strange Situation
- Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent, Disorganised
Johnson et al. (2010)
Secure babies more surprised by the unresponsive mum. Insecure babies more surprised by the responsive mum. Evidence for Internal Working Model.
Information Processing Approach
- Computational
- Algorithmic
- Implementational
Aspects:
Memory, Control. Strategy
(Marr, 1980??)
How does Information Processing changes during development
- Adding new ways of representing inf.
2. Adding new ways of processing inf.
Diamond (1985)
Changes in working memory development explain the A-not-B error. Delay between searching under the cloth.