TEST 1 Flashcards
Developmental psychology
the scientific study of the mental and behavioral changes in individuals as they mature
five reasons for learning about child development
Raising children (individual)
Choosing social policies (societal)
Education
Child Health & Welfare
Understanding Human Nature
How does studying child development relate to raising children
Knowledge could help parents, teachers, professional caretakers, etc.
What kinds of practices should we use or avoid?
examples: optimal/risky influences (e.g., TV/screen time?)
practical advice (e.g., managing problem behaviors)
i.e. spanking to manage anger:
in Canada, prevalence rate for spanking
25%
Studies show: more often spanked at age 4 or 5 =
more acting with inappropriate behaviour in grade 3 (held true beyond other factors)
Effective alternatives to spanking which lead to better outcomes (4)
Expressing sympathy and acknowledging emotions
Finding positive alternatives (distraction)
Recognizing and labeling emotions
Self-control strategies (tools)
E.g. turtle technique - remove yourself, retreat into turtle shell, think/calm, then reemerge from shell (notice, understand, manage)
effects of praise: what is the difference between telling a child:
“You are a good drawer”
“You did a good job on that drawing”
“You are a good drawer”
Refers to ability
Study showed this feedback led to distress when later criticized - felt sad, wanted to avoid drawing, couldn’t generate strategies to fix
“You did a good job on that drawing”
Refers to performance
Study showed this feedback led to good reactions when later criticized
How does studying child development relate to social policies - What are some examples?
violent video games (increase aggressive behaviors?)
hold back children who do poorly or promote them to the next grade to be with their peers?
how much should preschoolers’ courtroom testimonies be trusted?
In 2012, __% of victims of sexual offences in Canada were 11 years of age or younger
40
Are children reliable witnesses? ____! (age 3-5) UNLESS…which 3 things?
YES! (age 3-5) UNLESS…
Asked leading questions - tend to believe what adult believes - therefore, interviewers shouldn’t be given prior knowledge of the case
Asked repeated questions - begin to believe adult wants a different answer and so they change answers
Given props (e.g. dolls) - this is NOT helpful and may make more inaccurate claims because they don’t understand the symbolism of the doll (that they represent their body or the body of another person) - also, dolls are toys which are used for pretend play
What is an example of how researching child development relates to education?
Applications of research to enhance learning
E.g., no longer using circles to represent fractions - using lines or bars instead
What are some examples of how researching child development relates to child health and welfare?
Better diagnosis & treatment of developmental problems
examples: visual impairment, language delay, autism spectrum disorder, etc.
Complex ways to diagnose those who can’t communicate
Resting on our ability to get into a child’s mind
How does studying child development relate to understanding human nature?
How are we the same or different from other animals?
What makes people different from one another?
Where do our abilities come from?
What makes us who we are?
Addressing the questions of whether differences occur because of biology or environment
Nativism/Nativists believe that…
infants have substantial innate knowledge of evolutionarily important domains (e.g., physical objects, people)
Famous early nativist philosopher
Plato
Empiricists believed that…
infants possess general learning mechanisms that allow them to learn quickly, but lack the specialized capabilities nativists attribute
Famous early empiricist philosopher
Aristotle
When do differences emerge between male and female infants? Example
E.g., study of 36 hour old infants:
Girls looked longer at a woman’s face (more social)
Boys looked longer at the mobile of random parts of the face (more mechanical)
What are the 6 Enduring Themes of Child Development
Nature & Nurture
Active Child
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Mechanisms of Change
Sociocultural Context
Individual Differences
Early philosophers of the nature/nurture debate:
Nature - Plato
Experience - Aristotle and later, John Locke (tabula rasa)
Nature/nurture is not really either/or - current question is what?
more about how they come together across time - All human characteristics are created through interactions of genes and environment.
Explain the nature/nurture question in relation to schizophrenia
Nature - more likely to have if a parent has (inherited biologically)
Nurture - more likely to have if exposed to a troubled home
Studies of adopted children show that the condition is most likely to occur if both the above nature and nurture situations occur
What do we mean by the Active Child theme?
How do children play an active role in their own development?
How are children active in their own development?
- shape their own development
- are both passive and active (what they’re learning and how)
Preferences to attend to certain things (selective attention):
- Moving objects preferred over Other objects
- People preferred over Objects
- Caregivers preferred over Others
Motivated to learn
- little “experimenters” (e.g., dropping food tests - figuring out physical rules and social rules)
- play (role-playing)
Actively select their own environment - choosing friends, activities, clothes, toys, decorations, etc.
Continuity theories are related to what kind of change?
Quantitative change
changes with age occur gradually, in small increments
development occurs skill by skill and task by task
The human is not changing fundamentally
Stage theories are related to what kind of change?
Qualitative change
changes with age are sudden/quick large shifts
at each stage, a coherent way of thinking and experiencing the world
development is global and discontinuous (fundamental changes)
What are some examples of discontinuous theories?
Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson’s theories
Is development fundamentally more continuous or discontinuous?
Depends on:
- How you look at it
- How often you look at it
- What aspect of development you’re studying
E.g., height looks continuous but skills look discontinuous when tracked on a graph
What question does the theme Mechanisms of Change address?
How & Why does change occur?
What are the mechanisms of change?
Maturation – biological change that occurs on its own
- e.g., frontal lobes & self-control; puberty, brain development
Learning (experience-based cognitive change) – exposure to information
e.g., insight, creativity, problem solving
How does the sociocultural context influence development? (3)
We all have different circumstances:
physical environment
SES
Social environment
What is the physical environment and its effect on development?
urban vs. rural, neighborhood, house, daycare, school, etc.
Economic (resources) = national wealth, societal wealth, family/individual wealth - shapes the type of opportunities and exposure to skills
What is SES and its effect on development?
measure of social class based on income and education - food, daycare, school
What is the social environment and its effect on development?
parents, siblings, other family members, teachers, friends, peers, etc.
Cultural traditions = language, values, attitudes/beliefs, laws, political structure, etc.
Illustrates the need for cross-cultural research - not just conducted on WEIRD populations
What question does the theme of Individual Differences address?
How do children become so different from one another? E.g., Even siblings can be very different
How do children become so different from one another? (4)
Feedback loop created between:
Genetic differences
Different reactions to similar experiences
Treatment by others
Choice of environments
Important to understand how early differences emerge in order to understand…
where they come from
Conception is…
Union of a sperm and an egg (gametes, germ cells)
gametes/germ cells each contain…
23 chromosomes
come together to form 46 chromosomes (23 pairs)
A fertilized egg is called a…
it contains…
Zygote = 46 chromosomes
The zygote becomes what? When does this happen?
Embryo (3rd- 8th week)
Fetus (9th week - birth)
Early beliefs about prenatal development pertained to what concept?
Preformationism - Idea that there was a tiny preformed human inside the egg or the sperm - the baby is just getting bigger
What kind of theory was preformationism?
(continuous theory) - quantitative change
The internal debate among preformationists was what?
Spermists vs Ovists - arguing whether the tiny preformed baby was in the sperm or in the egg
Current beliefs about prenatal development are based on…
qualitative change
What did Aristotle call qualitative change in prenatal development? How did he discover this?
epigenesis - new structures and functions emerge during development - Aristotle opened up chicken eggs to see the development process
In prenatal development, the first stage in many species looks…
pretty similar and then differentiates through cells multiplying - structures and functions emerge
What are the four stages of cells in prenatal development?
Cell division – mitosis
Cell migration
Cell differentiation
Cell death – apoptosis
What is mitosis? When does it begin?
cell division - zygote splits into two equal parts - and then splits again over and over
begins 12 hours after fertilization and continues throughout fetal development
What is an example of cell migration?
embryonic brain cells (created deep inside the brain and travel to the outer layers of the cortex)
What is cell differentiation?
cells begin to specialize, fulfilling the needs of separate bodily structures and functions
initially all the cells are interchangeable and can become more than 200 different types of cells - start to specialize
How do the cells know what type of cell to become?
Location
the development of the cells is influenced by the location and the cells around it - research with frog embryos - took cells from a region of the frog embryo that would normally develop into an eye - grafted onto cells which would become stomach - those cells became stomach - the cells hadn’t yet specialized and were influenced by the cells around it (cells have to be moved early enough, before specialization occurs) - when cells were moved later in development, the cells still became eye cells on the stomach
What is apoptosis? What is an example?
selective death of certain cells as they are no longer needed
e.g., when human hands are forming, the webbing between the fingers dies so that fingers can be separated
What is the blastocyst? What do the outside and inside become?
fertilized egg containing a rapidly dividing ball of cells - outside will become cells that nourish and protect, inside will become embryo
What is the embryoblast?
bulge on one side that takes form on the 4th day- inner cell mass - this is where mono twins can form
monozygotic twins
identical
inner cell splits in half
have 100% same genes
dizygotic twins
fraternal
2 eggs & 2 sperm
- only 50% genetically similar
(no more alike than siblings)
fraternal twins can be fathered by two different men
The inner cell mass (embryoblast) becomes what? What does it develop?
cell mass becomes embryo and then develops into three layers that have different/distinct functions
once the three layers are formed, there is a U-shaped tube that forms (neural tube)
After the first week, what 3 things happen to the blastocyst?
it will attach to uterine lining
become dependent on mother
cells start differentiating
What does the top of the neural tube become?
What does the bottom become?
top = brain
bottom = spinal cord
Which areas form the quickest in prenatal development?
areas closest to head form the quickest (before the extremities)
The rest of the blastocyst (not the embryoblast) becomes what?
the rest of the blastocyst becomes the support system of the embryo
Amniotic sac - surrounds and protects
Placenta –
exchanges material
Umbilical cord – connects blood vessels
What are sensitive periods?
the organs/body parts are undergoing rapid development (crucial time), the most defects can happen during these times
major structural defects as well as functional defects
What kind of defects would be more likely to occur when structures are developing but not during the sensitive periods?
minor structural defects
structures are still developing but a little slower - defects would be minor during these periods (more structural rather than functional defects)
What part of the body takes the longest time to develop? Its sensitive period is when?
central nervous system
2-6 weeks
What do we notice about development at 4 weeks?
can see head is already bigger
When does the nose begin to develop?
5 weeks
What do we notice at 8 weeks development?
bulging forehead, eyelids, fingers, toes, nails
When does the lower body start developing?
16 weeks
When can we see the fetus making facial expressions like raising eyebrows, wrinkling forehead?
18 weeks
When does the fetus have the typical features of the newborn?
28 weeks
What else happens at 28 weeks?
lungs and brain are developed sufficiently enough to survive w/o medical intervention
When is likely the most important time of development during which everything is going through critical and rapid change - time when environmental agents can be most harmful?
3-9 weeks
What is a teratogen?
External agent that can cause damage (malformation) or death during prenatal development
Three types of teratogens
Drugs
Environmental pollutants
maternal factors
What maternal factors are considered teratogens? (4)
age
nutrition
disease (can include STDs)
emotional state/stress
What factors influence the severity of teratogenic effects?
timing
amount & duration
What is significant about timing of teratogens?
Some teratogens cause damage only if present during a sensitive period in prenatal development
What are two examples of a timing effect of a teratogen?
Thalidomide
babies born with limb deformities
defects occurred if taken between 4-6 weeks (when arms were developing)
Zika Virus
Microcephaly – baby’s head is much smaller than expected (hearing and vision loss, seizures, intellectual disabilities)
most defects occurred when contracted during first trimester
What is the dose-response relation?
greater exposure = greater damage
What is the most common teratogen? What does it cause?
alcohol
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)– varying degrees of intellectual disability, attention problems, hyperactivity
leading cause of fetal brain injury
dose-response relationship - greater quantities = greater risk
What is the sleeper effect? What is one example?
effect of a teratogen might not be seen until years later (delayed)
prenatal exposure to marijuana can result in various effects in older childhood (attention problems in elementary school, etc.)
Who coined the term tabula rasa (blank slate)?
John Locke
When does learning begin?
There is a limit - before the the CNS/brain exists, there is no possibility of learning because the physical structures needed are not there (first two wks at least)
During third trimester, there is surely experience/learning
Do fetuses have the sense of sight? By what age?
minimal experience
by 28 weeks can blink and sense light
When does fetal movement begin?
5–6 weeks
What is one of the earliest patterns of fetal movement? Why?
one of the earliest patterns of movement is hiccups - reason is a bit unknown but may help form burping reflex (adaptive)
When do we see a preference for right or left handedness?
at age 2 or 3 (or sometimes 6 months)
What did a prenatal research study show with respect to handedness?
Ultrasound scans of 1000 fetuses
At 15 weeks: 90% of fetuses suck right thumb
Follow-up of 75 at 10-12 years old:
60/60 right thumb-suckers remained right-handed
10/15 left thumb-suckers remained left-handed,
5 right-handed
What does prenatal swallowing suggest?
swallowing - helps practice tongue movements and helps digestive system to develop and function
What is the purpose of prenatal movement?
movements are adaptive - forming/developing joints
How is the sense of hearing in the womb?
hearing sense is keen - sound travels through amnionic fluid (4 times faster than in air)
Prenatal environment is noisy (e.g., heartbeat, digestive sounds)
Do newborns remember what they heard in the womb? How do we know? How old were newborns tested? What method?
3rd trimester – Fetus can hear in the womb & remember
Famous experiment - asked pregnant women to read Cat in the Hat out loud twice a day for last 6 wks of pregnancy
at 55 hours old headphones attached to soother/pacifier through which they could control what they heard through the headphones (depending on pattern of sucking) - either Cat in the Hat or a different story
-infants sucked faster to hear the Cat in the Hat - willing to work harder to hear something they were exposed to previously - heard it in womb and shaped their preferences
-was it familiarity or another reason (is the Cat just a better story?) when they heard the other story in utero, they preferred that story later
Infants prefer what kind of voice? How do we know?
- their mother’s voice to another female’s
heart rate increases in baby when hearing mother’s voice to another voice - their mother’s “womb voice” little linguistic context (words), but has prosodic characteristics of speech (frequency, pitch, temporal pattern, phrase structure)
Preference for this voice shown by sucking patterns
What kind of language do infants prefer?
familiar language over foreign language
Do newborns remember what they tasted in the womb? How do we know?
Infants can taste in the womb
Our food preferences can be shaped in the womb
During last month of pregnancy, mothers were randomly assigned to drink either Carrot juice vs. water every day for last three wks
5 ½ -months-old given Cereal with water and cereal with carrot juice
Measured: facial reactions & amount eaten
infants exposed to carrot juice made less negative faces and ingested more of carrot juice later
Can fetuses smell scents? How do we know?
Yes
newborns exposed to amniotic fluid of their own or another child’s - turned towards their own amniotic scent
Prefer scents reflecting flavors their mother ate while pregnant (e.g., licorice, garlic)
How much time do newborns spend sleeping?
a lot - 16 hours/day - twice as much as adult
REM sleep accounts for how much of newborns sleep time? Why might this be?
50%
learning through eye movements and movement (twitching)
REM sleep: What do eye movements do? What does twitching do?
develop visual system
develop motor system - building a motor map
What is different about infant REM sleep to an adult’s? How do we know?
infant brains do not disconnect from external world like ours do - how do we know? infants exposed to foreign vowel sounds in active sleep - recognized those sounds when they were awake - preferred them to other foreign sounds they had not been exposed to
Do we learn things in the womb?
Yes
Are newborns blank slates?
No
How does prenatal experience affect us later?
TERATOGENS – NEGATIVE
LEARNING & MEMORY
How can researchers decide what an infant prefers?
looking time - they prefer to look at interesting things over boring things
What are the three research methods used with infants?
Preferential Looking
Habituation
Violation of expectation
What is preferential looking?
Studying infants visual attention - where they look and how long
From looking longer at one image over another, we can make what two inferences/assumptions?
can discriminate between the images
and prefer one over the other
In a forced choice preferential looking paradigm, what will be the result if the infant does not prefer one image over another?
they will look at the images for equal amounts of time
Preferential looking goes beyond individual preference in what ways?
Are they able to identify something?
Do they have knowledge about something?
What is the key to the habituation and dishabituation paradigm?
making the infant bored
What is the set criteria?
set point which indicates when to stop presenting the same stimuli over again - is often set at less than half of initial looking
it is specific to the infant and depends on how long their looking time is the initial time seeing the video (if the baby initially looks for 8 secs then the set criteria will be 4 secs)
What are ways that habituation can be measured?
looking time, behavioural responses, biological responses
what is habituation?
decrease in response to repeated or continual stimulation
what is dishabituation?
introducing a new stimulus after habituation to a repeated stimulus creates interest
when the new/novel stimuli is introduced, the response will increase again (occurs after habituation - release from habitutation)
What does habituation (decreased response) indicate?
learning and memory - becomes boring because it is learned/remembered
Infants as young as ___________ show habituation
2 days old
how fast they habituate is an indicator for…
those who habituate quicker tend to have what when they’re older?
how fast they are processing information
higher IQs
habituation is ______________ because it means they are paying less attention to something they have already learned and are shifting attention to learn new things
adaptive
dishabituation is showing what two abilities?
ability to discriminate between two stimuli and identify novelty (can separate things into different categories)
dishabituation shows preference for what?
novelty (not certain stimuli)
Can habituation/dishabituation be anything other than visual?
yes, can be auditory
How could the direction of activity be different in habituation/dishabituation?
depending on what you are measuring the activity level may increase through habituation (e.g. heart rate will increase with habituation and decrease with dishabituation)
How can habituation be used with other paradigms?
habituation can be used to make sure that they have learned information and then move on to another paradigm (preferential looking, voe) to test the actual question
What is voe?
violation of expectation - we can figure out what they expect by seeing how they respond to events - when expectations are violated, they look longer
Two possible outcomes of a voe paradigm? What does the response indicate?
one should be possible or expected (given beliefs, knowledge, understanding)
one should be impossible or unexpected
Figure out the infant’s beliefs by examining which of the 2 events evokes a greater response
What is the difference between sensation and perception?
sensation is gathering information from the environment (external world) through sensory receptors (the actual stimuli experienced)
and
perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information about objects, events, and spatial layout (what the brain understands the sensations to be)
What is visual acuity?
sharpness and clarity of vision
How do we test infants’ visual acuity?
we use two pairs of images (one has thin black stripes close together and the other is a grey square) - show them the pair - infants prefer to look at patterns that have high contrast so using preferential looking design paradigm, we can show them various pairs and calculate the percent of time they are looking at one of the squares - draw conclusions about whether they can tell them apart from each other (if they can’t discriminate then they will look equally)
making stripes skinnier until they almost look like a plain grey square - at which point do they stop discriminating? this shows their acuity
At what age do infants have visual acuity approaching that of an adult’s?
8 months
A one month old will have what kind of vision? At what age is this changing?
can only see high contrast and no color (no difference between white and color)
2 months
Infants prefer to look at what kind of patterns?
of high visual contrast
- have poor contrast sensitivity (detect patterns only composed of highly contrasting elements)
What is optical expansion? What is it used for?
an object increases in size as it comes towards us
🡪 increasingly occludes the background
depth perception cue
How can we tell if an object is not coming directly towards us?
we can tell because it is not completely symmetrical
What adaptive function does optical expansion lead to?
blinking to protect our eyes (if the image is symmetrical we can tell it is coming directly towards us)
infants as young as __________ blink defensively at an expanding image that appears to be an object heading towards them
one month
What kind of infants show a delayed developmental pattern of blinks to looming objects? What does this indicate?
preterm infants
suggests that it could be due to brain maturation (they have had the same visual experience as others so it must be something else)
What is binocular disparity?
eyes are spaced apart so there are subtle differences between what each one is seeing and, therefore, perceiving - slightly different signals/images to our brain between eyes
What is stereopsis? What does it result in?
process by which the visual cortex combines the different neural signals caused by binocular disparity
- resulting in the perception of depth
- brain needs both images together to perceive depth accurately
When does stereopsis emerge?
This form of depth perception emerges ~ 4 months of age and is complete within a few weeks
What are six cues to object perception?
color
shape
texture
gaps
motion
common motion
At what age was common motion tested as object perception among infants? What method was used?
4 months old - blue line with green line(s) moving behind it - voe paradigm - they looked longer at broken green line
What is intermodal perception?
Inter + modality
(between) (sense)
info from one sense put together with info from another sense - any of our senses can be combined together
How do we test infant intermodality? What is an example? What ages of infants were tested?
give info through one sense and ask about another sense
put the pacifiers in their mouths without them seeing what it was - sucked for 90 secs - pacifiers removed without them seeing it - then they saw them on screens - which one did they look longer at?
both 12 hour old and 29 day infants looked longer at the pacifier they had had in their mouth even though they had never seen it - using info gathered by oral/touch experience to form a visual representation
What does the pacifier test tell us about infant intermodality?
because they are so young, it tells us that they do not need lengthy experience with objects (age) to have intermodal perception
Auditory-visual matching - what does this tell us about infants?
preferential looking
Infants prefer to watch images that match the sounds they hear
What is the McGurk effect?
Auditory-visual illusion which demonstrates how information gathered by different senses can be combined and perceived differently by the brain - sensations are changing perception when combined
Hear = /ba/
See = /ga/
See & listen = /da/
What aged infant showed the McGurk effect? How do we know?
4.5 month old
Were habituated to McGurk stimulus (auditory /ba/ & visual /ga/)
Measured looking-times during 3 test trials: /ba/ /da/ /tha/
They treat the /da/ sound as familiar after the McGurk stimulus, even though they never actually heard it
preferring to listen to familiar - preferential
At what age can infants distinguish synchronous from asynchronous dancing?
by 8-12 months
William James, one of the earliest psychologists, famously said that the world of the newborn is “a big blooming, buzzing confusion”
… is this true? Why?
No, they are paying attention, learning and begin to have expectations of the world
What are the three elements of the turtle technique?
Notice
Understand
Manage
