Developmental Psychology Test 1

constructivism

children “construct” their own knowledge by interacting with the environment

nature vs nurture

genetics vs environment

4 properties of Piaget’s theory

Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete and Formal

Sensorimotor

0-2 yrs, learn to distinguish self from world; object permanence

Preoperational

Key achievement: conservation- they will take the one that’s more

2-7 years, mental representation of objects

Concrete Operational

7-12 yrs, more advanced reasoning but not yet abstract

Formal operational

12+, mature thinking, abstract reasoning

A not B error

the idea that babies will look for hidden object in the same spot each time

Deffered imitation

the repetition of other peoples behavior a substantial time after it originally occurred

pre operational

biggest acquisition are symbolic representations, biggest weaknesses are egocentrism(perceiving the world solely from one's own point of view) & conservation \n problems(the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event) \n

Naughty Teddy experiment contributions

The demands of a task shapes a response, children may be answering what the adult wants them to say

**Piaget Contributions**

* Children are not stupid, they just think differently about the world 
* Children’s thinking undergoes qualitative shifts 
* Children are active learners. They “construct” knowledge by interacting with the environment 
* We can do experiments to test how children think

**Piaget Criticisms**:

* Some of children’s thinking occurs in specific areas of knowledge (domains)-not general stages
* Qualitative shifts occur within specific areas of cognition and not all at the same age
* Children also learn from others and thinking is shaped by culture
* We now have much more sophisticated methods for experiments

**Information-processing theories**

“Child as general purpose problem solver” 

* Cognition improves because of increase in memory and problem solving
* Focus on domain general processes (executive function, processing speed) 

**Task analysis**

* the research technique of specifying the goals, obstacles to their realization, and potential solution strategies involved in problem solving 

**Working memory**

*  memory system that involves actively attending to, maintaining, and processing information

**Executive functioning**

* control behavior and thought processes

**Inhibition**:

* as when resisting the temptation to play with ones phone when an important test looms 

**Explanations of memory development**

* Processing speed

**Rehearsal:**

the process of repeating information multiple times to aid memory of it

Problem solving:

the process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle

**Core knowledge theory**

“Child as well-adapted production of evolution” 

* Born with innate, domain specific knowledge and learning mechanisms 
* Nativits= emphasize knowledge, aka “core knowledge systems” 
* Contructivist= emphasize the process of building theories 

**Domains**

* are specific to certain kinds of knowledge 
* - example: We can't use language processing to understand all sounds (birds)

**Domain specific**

* special abilities allows us to predict what will happen in the world 
* Eg. a log rolling down a hill will continue to happen

**Domain-general**

* Memory 
* Attention 
* Inhibition 
* Processing speed 
* Problem solving 

**Nativism**

* is the belief that infants are born with substantial knowledge of evolutionarily important domains, as well as the ability to quickly and easily acquire more knowledge in these domains. 

**Constructivism**  \n

 is the theory that infants build increasingly advanced understanding by combining rudimentary innate knowledge with subsequent experiences.  \n

core-knowledge constructivists theories

* Several core-knowledge constructivists proposed that young children actively organize their understanding the most important domains into informal theories
* Hypothesize that children form naive theories of physics(knowledge of objects), psychology (knowledge of people), and biology(knowledge of plants and animals). 
* Emphasize that children's initial simple theories grow considerably more complex with age and experience. 

Sociocultural theories

\n

* How adults support and encourage children’s learning: Guided participation, cultural tools, social scaffolding- student’s ability to learn information through the guidance of a more informed individual

**Vygotsky’s theory**:

“Child as social learner” 

* Children are born social and learn from other people 
* Societies contribute to children’s development by providing cultural tools 
* Children learn through “guided participation” with a “more knowledgeable other” (e.g., parent) 

Private speech:

in which they tell themselves aloud what to do, much as their parents might have done earlier; second phase of Vygotskys internalization of thought process where children develop self regulation \n

 Children as products of their culture

* Societies contribute to children’s development by providing cultural tools: e.g. Abacus- used for counting and math, iphone, writes 

Intersubjectivity

* the mutual understanding that people share during communication

joint attention:

* a process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment 

Dynamic systems theories

a class of theories that focus on how change occurs over time in complex systems

**Visual processing**

Babies are born with astigmatism

**Visual acuity**

 sharpness and focus of objects 

\

**color perception**

 Adults see color strategies, but light is continum… Babies cant tell the difference between lights in the same category. By 5 months they can differentiate major categories 

\n

**Contrast sensitivity**

ability to perceive sharp and clear outlines of very small objects 

**Preferential-looking method**

* Present two stimuli and see which one the baby prefers to look at 
* Look at more complex if they can see the detail

**Habituation method or Violation of expectancy**

* Same image over and over until the baby habituates- gets bored and looks less
* Show a new image and see if the baby dishabituates- gets interested again, looks longer 
* Tells us whether they distinguish between the first image and the new image

**Perceptual constancy:**

* Perceive things/people as same whole object when approach (size changes) or turn
* Percieve objects as constant regardless of changes in the angle of perspective, distance, or lightning

**Edge alignment**

* Tendency to always infer unity 

**Common movement**

* How do things move in relation to one another

**Drawbridge study:**

objects are permanent and solid

Face preferences and facial recognition

* Prefers mom’s face 
* Faces in upside-down triangle symmetry 

**Human/monkey study**

\-Adults; easier for them to differentiate between two human faces than between monkey faces

\-6 month olds can identify individual human and monkey faces -9-month-olds and adults cannot identify as well as 6-month-olds

**Perceptual narrowing/tuning**

\n

* Infants form a species specific, face template by 9 months 
* Improve at identifying specifc faces over first weeks 
* At 6 months, pay attention to facial differences even of different species 
* Babies develop an abstract “representation” a prototype of a human face 
* Compare specific faces to the prototype 

**Depth perception and its cues**

* Multiple cues used to perceive depth 
* Different developmental timing

**Optical expansion**

* Objects expand as it gets closer 
* By 1 month old 
* Monocular cue: only need one eye to see this

**Binocular disparity, need two eyes**

* 2 eyes send slightly different images to the retina 
* Difference between the images (disparity) is larger when image is closer 
* Brain processes this to determine distance or depth 
* Developed by 4 months

**Dynamic (motion) cues**

Babies use their own motion to determine depth

**Pictorial cues**

* Use perspective cues from images 
* Infants do this by 7 months

**Visual cliff test**

* Baby goats won’t cross to “dangerous” side– innate depth perception; but baby goats are born ready to walk!


* What about human infants?
* Human infants younger than 4 months cross over 
* Between 4-6 months they refuse to cross even if mother encourages them 
* Avoiding cliffs is partly determined by crawling experiences

**Auditory localization**

where the sound is coming from

**Intermodal perception**

Senses are not completely independent.. eg) sight and touch (within the mouth) 

**Pacifier study**

2 pacifiers, one bumpy, one not; 1 month old suck on pacifier but can’t see, when they opened their eyes looked at the pacifier that was in their mouth

**McGurk effect**

* The mind tries to put together what you hear and what you see the mouth say 
* By 4.5 months, infants experience this illusionMotor development

* **Reflexes**

* Stepping- baby will step when lowered on surface
* Rooting- newborn’s mouth moves toward  touch on cheek (finding the nipple when hungry)
* Grasping- Newborns grab on to anything in their hand
* Sucking- Baby will step when lowered on surface

Romanian Orphans

* Examines children whose early like was spent in horribly inadequate orphanages in Romania in the late 1980s and early 1990s
* Children had almost no contact with caregivers
* Shortly after the collapse of the communist rule in Romania, a number of these children were adopted by families in Great Britain
* To evaluate the long term effects of their early deprivation, the physical, intellectual, and social development of about 150 of the Romanian children were examined at age 6, and to compare examined a group of British born children who had been adopted into British homes before they were six months.
* The question was whether human nature is sufficiently flexible that the Romanian born children could overcome the extreme deprivation of their early experience.
* By age 6, while their physical development had improved, their early experience of deprivation influenced their physical development, with the extent of negative effects depending on how long their children were in the orphanages, their intellectual development followed
* More prolonged damaging effects on the children's social development, the atypical social development was accompanied by abnormal brain activity
* Basic Principle of Childhood Development: the timing of experiences influences their effects

Raising Children (reasons to learn about development)

Tactics learned in developmental psychology can assist in the raising of kids, and teach parents proper parenting skills.

Choosing Social Policies (reasons to learn about development)

Being able to make informed decisions on the wide variety of social questions that affect children in general

Understanding Human Nature (reasons to learn about development)

Most of the intriguing questions regarding human nature focus on infancy and childhood, and studying development offers an opportunity to learn what people are like before they are affected by influences like family and society. 

Nature v Nurture (enduring theme #1)

How do nature and nurture together shape development?

This Active Child (enduring theme #2)

 How do children shape their own development?

Continuity/Discontinuity (enduring theme #3)

In what ways is developmental continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? 

Mechanisms of Change (enduring themes #4)

How does change occur?

The sociocultural context (enduring theme #5)

How does the sociocultural context influence development?

Individual Differences (enduring theme #6)

How do children become so different from one another?

Research and Children's Welfare (enduring theme #7)

How can research promote children's well being?

Longitudinal Observation

same object over time (clinical trials)

Longitudinal Experiment

Randomized control trials (covid: vaccine vs placebo) watched over- time 

Cross sectional Observation

Looks at development in slices (different ages)

Cross sectional Experiment

Experiments on children

Observations Benefits

Ecological validity, natural settings, rich data set

Observations Limitations

no controls, limits interpretation, must code behaviors, adds subjectivity, can find correlations but not causality

Experiments Benefits

Can create situations elicit specific behaviors, add control conditions to aid interpretation, study cause-effect relationships

Experiments Limitations

May not measure what you think it means (internal validity) , means children may be forced into specific responses

Longitudinal Benefits

Can identify order or emergence of cognitive skills, early skills that predict later abilities, better understanding of individual differences

Longitudinal Limitations

Expensive and time consuming, repeated testing may train to the test, lose participants over time, correlations unless control conditions used

Cross-Sectional Benefits

Easier to do, less expense and time, identify distinct abilities at different ages, estimate when changes occur (e.g., between 12 and 18 months)

Cross-Sectional Limitations

More difficult to understand individual differences, less detail on transitions- e.g, may test only 6 yrs and 8 yrs 

Which design is better?

Experimental designs are better, only research design that can determine causation

Reliability

can we produce the same experiment and end up with the same result (is it reliable)

Validity

are we measuring what we want it to measure

Internal Validity

are we testing what we think we are testing?

External Validity

can the results be applied to other contexts

Ecological Validity

can it happen in a real world setting (from lecture)

Correlation

Two variables are related statistically… correlation does not mean that one causes the other 

ex. Rooster crows and sun rises

Causation

One variable causes the other

Direction of Causality

Which variable causes the other to change

Third variable problem (confounding variable)

might be the thing that causes both

Random Assignment to Condition

randomly assigning people to avoid biases

Dependent Variable

what is measured

Independent Variable

is the constant that manipulates the dependent variable

Control Condition

a condition that does not involve exposure to the treatment or intervention under study.

Microgenetic

specifically designed to provide an in depth depiction of the processes that produce change

similar to longitudinal

Converging Evidence

* Do people testing the same thing with a different method get similar results? 
* Do multiple kinds of evidence, experiments point to the same conclusion

Reproducibility

Can other people run an experiment and produce the same results?

WEIRD

**W**estern **E**ducated **I**ndustrialized **R**ich **D**emocratic; 90% of psychological studies are done with only 10% of the world population. Generalize large groups of individuals without considering all cultures. **Problem of Generalizability.**