Developmental Psych Midterm 1

What age does developmental psychology focus on?

the first two decades

True or false: development is hierarchical and self organizing

true

What does WEIRD stand for?

W: western

E: educated

I: industrialized

R: rich

D: democratic

What are the benefits of extended childhood?

1. more exposure to different environments, can adapt to more

   • periods of plasticity

2. microplasticity may parallel developments of disorders

A researcher is studying how early exposure to maternal stress during pregnancy affects infant brain development. She finds that infants exposed to higher maternal cortisol levels in utero show differences in the structure and function of the amygdala compared to infants with lower prenatal cortisol exposure.

This finding best illustrates which of the following?

a) Experience-expectant development

b) Gene × environment correlation

c) Experience-dependent plasticity

d) Fetal programming

D is the correct response because fetal programming refers to the idea that prenatal exposures (like maternal stress hormones) can biologically shape the developing fetus in long-lasting ways—altering brain structure, stress response systems, and even disease risk later in life.

A is incorrect because experience-expectant development refers to universal experiences the brain "expects" to occur for typical development (e.g., visual input for visual cortex development, language exposure for language areas). Maternal stress is not a universal, species-expected input, and the changes observed to be reported are not part of typical developmental programming—they’re due to variability in exposure, not species-wide expectation.

B is incorrect because gene × environment interaction refers to the idea that a person's environment might influence the way their genes are expressed or function. In this question, there is no mention of genes shaping development —only environmental exposure (maternal stress) shaping development.

C is incorrect because experience-dependent plasticity involves brain changes due to individual, unique experiences—like learning to play an instrument or speaking a second language. These are experiences not expected by evolution, and they occur postnatally. The question refers to prenatal exposure, and the biological changes here are not from learning or individualized experiences—they reflect biologically embedded effects of stress during a sensitive developmental window.

Explain nature vs nurture

nature: genes and hereditary

nature: environmental variables

• childhood experiences, how we are raised, social relationships, surrounding culture

HOW DO THEY INTERACT TO SHAPE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSESS

/What did Plato and Aristotle believe bout nature vs nurture?

Plato: Nature - humans born with innate knowledge

Aristotle: Nurture - believed all knowledge was acquired (comes from experience)

What did Lock and Rosseau believe?

Lock - believed all children were a tabula rasa. Goal of child rearing is growth of character. instill discipline and reason, then treat them like an adult.

Rosseau - believed children learn from their interactions with objects and people rather than instruction. Formal instruction should begin after age 12.

Describe the social reform movement during the industrial revolution

• children in UK and US worked being poorly paid with little to no legal protections

• 1884 Earl of Shaftesbury England so to British house of commons and this resulted in a law against 10yrs and younger working

The National Child Labor Committee-backed Fair Labor Standards Act

passed in the US in 1938 barring the employment of anyone under 16, which is still in place today

What book did Darwin publish that represents using observation as a means of studying child development?

“Baby Biography” in 1877 about his infant son.

Jane Addams

Social Worker (1712-1788)

• founding member of National Child Labor Committee

• lobbied for the establishment of the juvenile court system

Thrya J Edwards

Social worker (1897-1953):

• Chicago school of civics and philanthropy

• improved child welfare legislation

• founded her own children’s home

What are the 7 themes of child development?

1. Nature vs Nurture

2. Active child

3. Continuity vs. Discontinuity

4. Mechanisms of Change

5. Social Cultural Context

6. Individual differences

7. research and children’s welfare

the active child

• children contribute to their own development through choosing what to engage with

• ex. infants showing preference to mothers face and by looking and cooing when she smiles

continuity vs discontinuity; what is a caveat of this?

continuous - age related changes occur gradually

discontinuous - growth occurs in fits and spurts appearing more like discreet stages

Looking at a boys height once a year over several years looks continuous. But when looking at the year by year change in height, it looks discontinuous.

Mechanisms of change: how does change occur?

Example using development of a math skills.

• Neural: increased interconnection between frontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus

• Genetics: presence or absence of specific alleles

• Behavioral: improved strategies for solving problems

• Microbiome”

the social cultural context

how physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances influence children’s development

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model

children are influences by the spheres within which they live their lives

True or False:

child development and wellbeing is supported by culturally specific relational ontologies

individual differences

• everyone has different genes (even twins)

• subjective treatment

• objective treatment

• the active child

research and children’s welfare: What are the real world implications of child development research?

• education

• legal system

• justice

• medicine

For the sake of this class, what are the four steps to the scientific method?

1. choose a question

2. formulate a hypothesis

3. develop a method for testing the hypothesis

4. use the resulting data to draw conclusions about the hypothesis

How do we make sure measurements are both RELIABLE and VALID?

• reliable measures are consistent across raters and time/number of tests

• valid measures need to measure what we think they are measuring (internal validity)

• valid measures should be able to be generalized beyond the particulars of the research population (external validity)

What are the different ways to gather child development data?

• interviews and questionaries

  • can children report accurately

  • what language are you using in the questions

• naturalistic observation

  • the researcher is unobtrusive

• Structured observation

  • set up a situation and observe how different children react

• Biological

  • MRI, microbiome, immune system

correlation, what does it measure?

measures how strongly associated two variables are from (-1 to1).

• correlation DOES NOT mean causation

What kinds of experiments are the only kind that can reveal cause-effect relationships?

Experimental design

• random assignment

• experimental control

What are the difference approaches to studying age?

cross sectional: different subjects of different ages observed at a single point in time

longitudinal: same subjects observed at different ages

You can also mix the two

What are the ethics to abide by in studying child development?

1. do no harm

2. gain parental consent and child assent

3. preserve anonymity

4. discuss informatic that is important for child’s welfare

5. explain to participants at a level they can understand

6. use respectful language

What are the stages of prenatal development?

1. Zygote: fertilized with 23 chronozones from each parent, cell division has not occurred yet

2. embryo (3-8 weeks): inner cell mass becomes embryo and outer becomes the amniotic sac and placenta (these masses form after 4 days)

3. Fetus (9 weeks-birth): grows from head to toe and from midline outward until ready for birth

cell migration

movement of newly formed cells (mitosis) away from their point of origin

cell differentiation

embryonic stem cells can become over 200 different types of cells in the human body

apoptosis

programmed cell death

• can be used strategically by the body to reveal hands and feet from earlier phases which the extremities were just nubs before

What are the three layers of the inner cell mass (the ones that eventually becomes an embryo?

Endoderm layer: digestive system, liver, pancreas, lungs

Mesoderm layer: circulatory system, lungs (epithelial layers) skeletal system, muscular system

ectoderm layer: hair, nails, skin, nervous system

What is the 4th trimester

• humans are ALTRICIAL: dependent of parents for survival

• the 3 months after birth ( the newborn period)

True or False: stages of rapid growth can make the development system valuable to the environment.

true

teratogens

• environmental agents that have potential to harm the fetus

• many cause damage only if they are present during a sensitive period of prenatal development

• dose-response relationship

• ex. thalidomide which impact development of limbs when taken during this sensitive period, otherwise did nothing else

What is fetal programming?

refers to the belated emergence of effects of prenatal experiences that program physiological set points that govern physiology in adulthood.

What are ways that the fetus is protected prenatally?

• the placenta: provides oxygen and nutrients for the fetus and removes waste products

• not a perfect barrier against environmental toxins and drugs

  • ex. lead, alcohol, marijuana

other general risk factors for prenatal development

• maternal age (not linear)

• nutrition

• disease

• maternal emotional state

• STI from father

What are fetuses doing in the womb? What senses are being used?

• they can hear

• light filters through the abdominal wall

• rubbing face, thumb sucking, feeling maternal movements

• what moms eats, they taste

• burping, swallowing, ‘breathing’, kicking, punching

What could a fetus learn in the womb?

• newborns can recognizes rhymes and stories presented before birth

• newborns prefer sound, tastes, and smells, that are familiar becuase of prenatal experience

chromosome vs gene vs allele

• chromosome - dna molecule with all the genetic martial of the organism

• a segments of DNA that codes for a particular gene product

• allele is the gene type (blue eyes)

Describe the basic steps of protein synthesis

1. transcription

   • (dna to mrna)

2. translation

   • (mrna to protien)

3. protein

true or false: genotype does not equal phenotype

true

how to methylation affect protein synthesis?

it prevents transcription

Epigenetic inheritance

inheriting how and which genes are turned on and off, not the gene itself necessarily

• the effect of child’s environment on child’s genotype

ex. methylation prevents transcription

What are the 5 pathways of heritability?

1. Parent genotype influences offspring genotype

2. child’s genotype influences child’s phenotype

3. child’s environment to child’s’ phenotype

4. child’s phenotype to child’s environment

5. child’s environment to child’s genotype

   • epigenetics

What are multifactorial influences on development?

traits affected by environment and genetic factors

behavior genetics

the science concerned with how variation in behavior and development results from the combination of genetic and environmental factors

What are quantitative genetics research designs?

• family study

• twin study

• adoption study

• equal environments assumption

genome-wide association studies (gwas)

link specific DNA segments with specific traits

genome wide complex trait analysis (gcta)

takes estimates of genetics resemblance across large groups of individuals

true or false: high heritability does not imply immutability

true

what are examples of how genetically transmitted developmental disorders are studied?

• dominant recessive patterns

• sex linked inheritance

• polygenetic inheritance

• chromosomal anomalies

• genetic anomalies

• unidentified genetic basis

What do polygenic risk scores for behavioral traits show?

screens for traits like depression, autism, cancer

How much of the measured variance of a phenotypic trait within a

population of individuals is attributable to genetic differences?

- Applies to the population:

Intelligence

a. 50% of the variance in IQ scores the population is attributable to

genetic differences between individuals in the population

b. 50% of my IQ score is due to my genes and 50% is due to

environment

a. 50% of the variance in IQ scores the population is attributable to

genetic differences between individuals in the population

endophenotypes

mediate the pathways between genes and behavior, and include the effect of genes on the brain and central nervous system

Describe the structure of the neuron

cell body - is the metabolic center of the neuron 9including the nucleus)

dentries - receive input from the other cells and conduct it towards

axon - conduct electrical impulses away from the cell body to connections with other neurons

what is the grey matter of the brain?

the cerebral cortex

• involved in variety of mental functions: seeing, hearing, thinking, problems solving, feeling

what are the 4 lobes of the cortex that are each associated with different behavior?

• frontal - brains “executive”, involved in higher order functions

• parietal - spatial processing and integration across sensory modalities

• occipital - processing visual information

• temporal - speech, language, emotion, processing, auditory information

frontal cortex

the front part of the cortex assists in planning, self control, and self regulation. it is very immature in the newborn

auditory cortex

hearing is quite acute at birth, the result of month of ‘eavesdropping’, during the fetal period

visual cortex

vision is the least mature sense at birth becuase the fetus has nothing much to see

describe cerebral lateralization

• Cerebral hemispheres: two halves of the cortex

  • For the most part, sensory input from one side of the body goes to the opposite hemisphere of the brain

• Corpus callosum: a dense tract of nerve fibers

  • Enables the two hemispheres to communicate

• Cerebral lateralization: specialization of the brain’s hemispheres for different modes of processing

neurogenesis

birth of new neurons

myeliinatiton

gila ensheath neurons in fat to increase speed

synaptogenesis

extraordinary growth of axonal and dendritic fibers resulting in an abundance of neuronal

migration

neurons move to their locations in the brain

synapse elimination

trimming down the neuronal connections by about 40%. Glia are the gardeners

What are two types of plasticity in the brain?

1. experience - expectant

2. experience - dependent

Experience expectant brain development? pros and cons?

• certain experiences are typically available to all members of the species

• the brain expects the input from these experiences to fine-tune the circuitry

• Benefits - less information needs to be pre-coded into the brain

• disadvantages - vulnerability. What is the expected input is not there

• occurs during sensitive periods of development

• the things with the cats eye not working if they didn’t use it when they were young

experience dependent brain development? pros and cons?

• each individual have distinct experiences

• if experience is there, the function will develop. if not, it wont

Which of the following is not a reason for why a teratogen can affect the fetus, and not the mother?

• The mother is not undergoing organogenesis, while the fetus is

• A healthy dose of medicine for the adult mother may be a significant overdose for the fetus

• The placenta absorbs all toxic materials

Freddie is 2 years old. One time when he was out on a walk he

watched a trash truck ‘eating trash’ and was delighted. His

mama loves how excited he gets to see trash trucks, so she

drives him around campus to see the trucks in action, and

shows him videos of trash trucks in the wild. She also bought

him a trash truck toy. According to the textbook, we might say

that Freddie is showing evidence of what developmental theme

➤ The active child

➤ Mechanisms of change

➤ Continuity vs. Discontinuity

➤ The sociocultural context

• the active child

How does DNA become protein?

➤ DNA is transcribed to mRNA and translated to protein

➤ DNA is translated to mRNA and transcribed to protein

➤ DNA is transmuted to mRNA and transcribed to protein

➤ DNA is transcribed to mRNA and transmuted to protein

DNA is transcribed to mRNA and translated to protein

sensation vs perception

• sensation: processing of basic information from external world via receptors in the sense organs and brain

• perception: process of organizing and interpreting sensory information about the objects, events, and spatial layout of the world around us

motivated behavior

infants chose to approach, touch, move their bodies, in ways that help us to infer their motivations/knowledge

preferential looking

• infants would prefer to look at something than nothing’

• infants would prefer to look at novel things than familiar things

habituation

decline in a child’s response to an object once its been exposed to it

Describe an infants vision sensory development

• they prefer to look at patterns with high visual contrast

• light sensitive cones enable seeing fine detail and color

  • infant cone cells are packed 4 times further apart from one another than adults

• early in life, vision is blurry, but by 8 months vision approximates adults

• preference for unique colors over color combinations

• preference of color categorization before language acquisition

at how many months does color perception occur

at 2 months

when does smooth pursuit eye begin to develop in infants?

around 4 months

perceptual constancy

perception of objects being constant size, shape, color etc in spite of physical difference in the retinal image of the object. evident even in newborns

object segregation

process of deciding whether two objects are separable

• independent motion is a good cue for object segregation

Describe face perception development

• few days: maternal preference

• few months: gender experience preference

• by 6 months, babies are generalists

• about 9 months: perceptual narrowing

Describe the “violation of expectancy” procedure

• used to explore object knowledge in infants

• shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest

• infants as young as 3.5 months looked longer at impossible events than at possible events

describe auditory development in infants

• much more developed than vision at birth, but does get better

• infants prefer infant directed speech

by how many months can infants move rhythmically to music

5 months

• experience plays key role in development of early musical preferences

describe development of taste and smell

• sensitivity to taste develops prenatally

• newborns prefer sweet flavors and smell of breast milk

• infants can recognize the smell of their mothers from the smell of other women

• young children may react negatively to novel foods because of taste instead of taste

• infants prefer maternal body odor

describe touch infant sensory development

• oral exploration dominates the first few months

• after 4 months they become interested in the objects themselves

• mental maps of their bodies develop

• around 7 months, infants process the where other people are touched (hands, not feet)

intermodal development

• combining information from two or more sensory system

• infants connecting visual and auditory stimuli, speech sounds and facial movements, setting and feeling

• knowing what pacifier is the bumping pacifier by just seeing it, once they’ve blindly had it in their mouth

Reflexes, name the three we went over in class

Reflexes: tightly organized pattern of action, sometimes with adaptive significance

• rooting - touching side of their mouth/lip

• sucking/swallowing

• tonic neck - when infant turns it head to one side, the arms and legs to extend on that side

when does independent sitting usually start

at 5 months it starts, but varies by culture

What did early pioneers view motor development to be governed by?

infant’s motor development is governed by brain maturation

What do current theorists believe motor development is a result of?

• Neural mechanisms

• Increases in infants’ strength

• Posture control

• Balance

• Perceptual skills

• Changes in body proportions

• Motivation

affordances

Affordances are discovered by figuring out relationships between one’s own

body and abilities and the things in the environment

pre-reaching movements

clumsy swiping movements by young infants toward the general vicinity of objects they see

• 3 to 4 months: successful reaching

• 7 months: learning facilities reaching, self directed visual experiences aid motor development

scale errors

ex. young children trying to sit in a miniature doll chair

habituation

diminished attention to what is familiar enables infants to pay attention to, and learn about, what is new.