Developmental Psych Quiz 2

Behaviorism 

This perspective suggests that children become different from one another because they have different histories of reinforcement and learning opportunities

Behaviorism example 1

classical conditioning

• UCS: Steel bar being hit (loud noise)

• UCR: Little Albert crying/showing fear

• Neutral stimulus: Rat

• Conditioning phase: Rat + loud noise

• CS: Rat

• CR: Crying in response to seeing the rat

counter conditioning

Systematic desensitization: positive responses are gradually conditioned to stimuli that initially elicited a negative response

behaviorism example 2

operant conditioning

Learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for a given behavior

Child learns what happens when they perform a particular behavior

(If I do X, then Y happens)

operarant conditioning 

Two categories of responses…

Reinforcement: when a response or consequences causes an increase in the occurrence of a behavior

Punishment: when a response or consequence decreases the occurrence of the behavior

…which can be positive or negative

reinforcement schedules

• Reinforcement schedules can be…

  • Interval: where a reinforcer appears occurs after a specific length of time

  • Ratio: where a reinforcer appears after a certain number of occurrences of the response

…and be fixed or variable

social learning

Most human learning is inherently social in nature and is based on observation of the behavior in other people

Learning occurs via observing and imitating other people

nativism 

The idea that certain ideas or abilities are innate to the human mind and do not need to be learned

Naïve physics, psychology, biology (maybe geometry?)

empiricism

The idea that all human thought and knowledge ultimately come from sensory experience

violation of expectation

1. object knowledge

2. physical knowledge

object knowledge

Object permanence: the belief that objects continue to exist even when hidden.

physical knowedlge - what they know 

Infants know A LOT about the physical world before they are capable of operating on it

Before the age of 1 year old…

Expect that objects cannot float in midair

Solids and liquids to have different properties (5 mos)

Balls roll down (not up) slopes (7 mos)

Balls speed up when going down an incline (rather than slow down: 7 mos)

Not all objects can support other objects

physical knowledge

Object properties

Continuity: objects exist continuously in time and space

Solidity: for two objects to exist continuously, the two cannot exist at the same time in the same space

What’s a theory good for anyway?



(1) Provide a framework for understanding important phenomena


(2) Generate new (falsifiable) research questions & predictions


(3) Lead to a better understanding of children

cognitive development

Perception, attention, language, problem solving, reasoning, memory, conceptual understanding, (intelligence?)

socio-emotional development

Emotions, personality, peer and family relationships, self-understanding and identity, aggression, morality

piagetian theory 

Considered that cognitive development involves a series of four stages

Stages are constructed through the processes of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration

constructivism

Constructivism: Child actively constructs their knowledge.

Piaget on continuious/discontinuous

According to Piaget, development is characterized by qualitative, discontinuous shifts in cognition/ability, but these shifts are determined by continuous processes

Assimilation:

The process by which people translate incoming information into a form that fits concepts they already understand

Fit something into current theories

Accommodation:

The process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences

Create new theories

Equilibration:

The process by which children (or other people) balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

Make the most of current theories while flexibly creating new ones when necessary

sensorimotor stage

birth to 2 yrs

Infants have:

1) basic motor systems (reflexes)

2) sensory/perceptual systems

3) learning mechanisms of assimilation, accommodation, & equilibrium

According to Piaget, infants live primarily in the here-and-now

Indicator(s): Sensorimotor failures of object permanence

“Out of sight, out of mind”

Phenomena: A-not-B error

Phenomena: Deferred Imitation

Preoperational stage:

Preoperational stage: 2 – 7 years

1. Development of symbolic representations: Toddlers begin to represent experiences in language, imagery, & symbolic thought

2. Highly egocentric

3. Cannot perform “operations” (reversible mental activities)

4. Focus on a single, perceptually-salient aspect of an event (centration)

Phenomena: Centration

Phenomena: Failure of conservation

Phenomena: Failure of transitivity

Phenomena: Egocentricity

Concrete Operational stage

7 – 11 years

Children can reason logically about concrete objects and events

However, they have difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms in combining information systematically

Phenomena: Formal logic failure

Formal Operational stage

12+

1) Children (and adults) can think about abstractions and hypotheticals

2) Can perform systematic “experiments” to draw conclusions about the world

Weakness of Piaget’s Theory


(1) Vague about the mechanisms of change and how cognitive growth happens



(2) Infants and young children are less dumb than Piaget thought



(3) Underestimates the contributions of social input



(4) Stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it actually is

Core knowledge theories: 



Approaches that view children as having some innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance, and domain-specific learning mechanisms for rapidly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in those domains.

Core concepts in core knowledge


Focus on domains of knowledge that were likely to have been important across evolutionary history

• Assumes, in these domains, that young individuals are considerably more sophisticated than older theorists assumed

example: 3-4 year olds lie

• 
Assumes that infants are born with innate cognitive machinery in evolutionarily important domains

• 
Children are born with both general-learning abilities, as well as specialized (domain-specific) learning mechanisms or mental structures that allow them to quickly and easily acquire information of evolutionary importance

• Emphasizes continuity

• Infants born with domain-specific cognitive capabilities which it then uses to gather more information from the world to increase its knowledge

Good evidence for core knowledge theories:

Cultural invariance (seen across different cultures)

Early emergence (infants “born” with capability)

Present in other species (especially closely related ones)

Different flavors of core knowledge theories

Nativsm vs construtivism….

Nativsm vs construtivism…. for theories

Infants are born with substantial knowledge of evolutionarily important domains, as well as the ability to quickly and easily acquire more knowledge in those domains

VS 

Blends elements of nativism with Piagetian theory and information-processing theories. Proposes domain-specific learning abilities, and knowledge is constructed by the interaction of those learning abilities and experience with the world.

core knowledge theories: nativist 

Four core-knowledge systems:

Objects

inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions

(2) Agents

minds of people and other goal-directed agents

(3) Number

numbers of objects and events

(4) Space

spatial layouts and geometric relations

Each system has its own principles (e.g., solidity, continuity in physical objects)

core knowledge theories: nativist on language

Language

Language Acquisition Device (or Universal Grammar): An innate ability that allows children to master complex languages without direct and explicit instruction from adults

Linguistic universals.

All languages have nouns and verbs.

All spoken languages have consonants and vowels.

(More when we get to the section on language and language development)

Core knowledge theories: Nativist version -

Systematic errors

Overgeneralization

ex. i hided the treasures

Core knowledge theories:

Constructivist version

Constructivism is a softer version of core-knowledge.

Blends the idea that infants have cognitive machinery that allows them to easily learn about evolutionarily relevant things, and that cognitive machinery combines with environmental input and experience to shape what the child actually learns.

Constructivist core domains:

Naïve physics

Naïve psychology

Naïve biology

Constructivist core domains share several principles:

Identify fundamental units for dividing relevant objects and events into a few basic categories.

Explain many phenomena in terms of a few fundamental principles.

Explain events in terms of unobservable causes.

Overall, instead of having to learn everything from scratch, these basic principles can be applied within a domain to scaffold learning.

Naïve biology

Identify fundamental units for dividing relevant objects and events into a few basic categories.

Living vs. nonliving (Animate vs. inanimate)

(2) Explain many phenomena in terms of a few fundamental principles.

Living things need to eat and drink, and move around to get to food and water

(3)Explain events in terms of unobservable causes.

Living things can move themselves to achieve their goals.

Information processing theories



A class of theories that focus on the structure of the cognitive system and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems.

Focused on mechanisms of change

Development happens in small increments 
(not in qualitatively different stages, as in Piaget’s theory).

Child as computer processor



Hardware = memory capacity and speed in processing

Software = Strategies and knowledge available for use by the child

With age, children’s brain mature and develop connections, and children acquire new strategies and knowledge allowing them to:



(1) process more information at one time


(2) process information more quickly


(3) build on and expand existing knowledge structures and strategies

Attention: the gatekeeper of learning


sensation // so many stimuli!

perception // how do we make sense of stimuli we attend to?

selection // what will we attend to?

Memory: keeping it all in

Two developmental components that influence retention

language // important mediator and transformer of encoding

speed of processing // affects how quickly things get into memory

Components of memory

Working memory

Long-term memory

Executive Function

Working Memory

conscious, active processing of incoming visual and auditory information and of information retrieved from long-term memory


Long-term Memory

explicit:

Semantic

Episodic

Autobiographical

implicit:

Procedural’

Auditory

knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime

Executive Function

The ability to control one’s cognitive processes and behaviors

Inhibition

Enhancing working memory

Cognitive flexibility

Can observe changes in these in tasks like Simon Says, asking kids to switch tasks, looking at instances of rehearsal, etc.

Sociocultural theories:



Approaches that emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children’s development. 

Children as social learners


Lev Vygotsky



believed that children’s minds grow through interaction with social world




….?

Most human learning is inherently social in nature and is based on observation of the behavior in other people


Guided participation:

a process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to learn.


Intersubjectivity:

the mutual understanding that people share during communication.

Which happens in part through joint attention

Joint attention:

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

Social scaffolding:

a process in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own.

zone of proximal development

// distance between the learner’s actual and potential developmental level

the mind is always changing as part of a dialectical relationship, with the world influencing the individual and the individual influencing the world. it is this process that should be analyzed, not the product.

Componenets of language

• Phonemes

• Morphemes

• Syntax

• Context

• Phonemes

: the elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce language

• For example, /r/ake produces a different meaningful sound than /l/ake

• In terms of development, known as phonological development

• Morphemes

: smallest unit of meaning in a language

• These can also include word endings (e.g., -s to pluralize)

• In terms of development, known as semantic development

• Syntax

: the set of rules that govern the possible combinations of words from different categories – into sentences

• Order of words can be important

• In terms of development, known as syntactic development

Context:

the cultural rules and shared knowledge that determines the meaning of the words

Can include body language, tone, as well as other inputs

Ingredients for language development

Both species-specific, and species universal

Only humans do it, but all humans do it

Although there are examples of other animals developing a rudimentary vocabulary, only humans can engage in the complex processes necessary to produce novel forms of communication

Sensitive period for language can vary, but ends between 5 – puberty

Social input is important for language development

Infant-directed speech

the distinctive mode of speech that adults use when talking to babies or young adults

IDS Features

Features of IDS:

positive emotional tone

exaggeration

In both production (e.g., elongated vowels) and facial expressions

slower speech

higher pitch

swooping back and forth between high pitches and low pitches

Acquiring language: Comprehension

Categorical perception of speech: the perception of speech as belonging to separate categories

Infants are better at this than adults are – can perceived all 600 consonants and 200 vowels

Word segmentation:

the process of discovering where words end and begin in fluid speech

Aided by:

Stress patterning – the way in which the syllables in a word are stressed; in English, the first syllable is often stressed

Distributional properties – the extent to which certain sounds are more likely to co-occur than with other sounds

Acquiring language: Production

Language production is aided by the social context – when infants realize that their vocalizations evoke responses from caregivers, they begin to engage in reciprocal “dialogue”

By 6-8 weeks, infants are cooing

By 6-10 months, infants are babbling

production Occurs between 10-15 months

Producing a sound that is used to refer to something or express something, that is understood by the listener

Usually talk about things they see all the time or are personally relevant (parents, siblings, cookie, juice)

Production pt 2

Next comes a vocabulary spurt ~18 months

Children begin to learn a lot of new words as a function of multiple inputs, including

Parents directing attention and providing label

The “30 million word gap”

production pt 3

At ~24 months, children begin putting words together into sentences – which is what really distinguishes humans from non-humans

Telegraphic speech: speech that is typically 2 word utterances that communicate a desire or motivation

“more” + “juice” + ”drink” can become “more juice”, or “drink juice” to communicate slightly more complex ideas

Because word order in English matters, telegraphic speech with reflect this – “drink juice” more likely than “juice drink”

Production: Conversational Skills

Between 2-3 years old, children start being able to stay on topic (from ~20% of the time to 40%)

One important component is pragmatic development – the ability to understand meaning beyond the words that are actually said

Includes components such as tone/affect

Concepts

General ideas or understandings that can be used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that are similar in some way.

Theories of conceptual development from a nativist

Nativist view

“innate understanding of basic concepts plays a central role in development.”

Nature: Born with basic concepts of time, space, number, causality, social agents/minds.

Nurture: Experience builds on this innate foundation to construct further knowledge.

Theories of conceptual development from a empiricist

Empiricist view

“infants born with general learning mechanisms only.”

Nature: Born with ability to perceive, attend, associate, generalize, and remember.

Nurture: Massive exposure to experience utilizes these learning mechanisms to create knowledge.

Categorization

“the cognitive process of classifying items or events into groups based on one or more common features.”

The converse of categorization is discrimination, “distinguishing items or events based on one or more distinct features.”

Why is categorization (or discrimination) important?

Categories “vs” Concepts

Categories are a set of items or events that are classified together

Concepts are the abstract set of rules that define membership in a category

Categorization can occur independent of concept formation (e.g., you don’t need to know the rules by which you are classifying something in order to be able to classify it.)

Types of categorization: Perceptual

Perceptual categorization uses sensory input to identify similarities between different stimuli and to group them together accordingly

Present in infancy

Tested with stimulus generalization tasks: Subjects are trained to respond to one sensory stimulus (e.g., the color blue) and then tasted with a range of stimuli that vary along this sensory dimension (lots of colors).

These measure the strength of responding, as a function of how similar the test stimulus is to the trained stimulus. Can create a stimulus generalization gradient

Types of categorization: Functional

Functional categorization groups items or events together according to a shared meaning or association.

E.g., cutlery (knives, forks, and spoons all look distinct, but serve the same function of eating food).

Can test with functional equivalence tasks.

Version of this for non/pre-verbal subjects is a stimulus equivalence task (do different forms of the same thing represent the same thing: picture of dog, actual dog, description of a dog).

Types of categorization: Relational

Relational categorization groups items together that exhibit the same connection between them.  Often called “rule-based” learning, and used in same/different categorizations.

Types of categorization: Social

Social categorization is the process of classifying organisms into groups such as conspecifics versus heterospecifics, familiar versus unfamiliar individuals, and kin versus non-kin (and I’d add, ingroup versus outgroup members).

- In humans, can also  add in culturally relevant categories, such as gender, race, social status, ethnicity, collegiate affiliation, etc.

Category hierarchies

• superordinate 

• basic

• subordinate

superordinate

animals ( broad categories)

basic

easy to learn, maximizes category differences, minizes within category variances (dogs)

subordinate

hyper specific (golden retrievers)

Learning Categories

Caregivers often use basic level to teach superordinate and subordinate levels (e.g., dogs are a type of mammal, or Labradors are a type of dog).

Kids also get a lot of input at the basic level (e.g., look kiddo! It’s a dog! Dogs woof!)

Language is an important input

In infancy, hearing a label (despite not understanding the meaning of that label) promotes object categorization

Theories of mental representations underlying concepts

Most existing theories fall into three camps, which make some assumptions about what the underlying mental representation of the concept is

These three theories are:

Classical

Exemplar

Prototype

1. Classical View

1. Classical View

• Categorization rules are based on specific features of group items

• Properties must be shared by all category members

• Mental representation: rule-based category features must be present

exemplar view

novel items are compqared to previously encountered examples that are stored in long-term memory

mental representation: stored exemplars

prototype view

novel items are compared to the category prototype, which is created as a composite of previously encountered examples

mental representation: category prototype

Naïve Biology - conceptual development lecture 

Naïve Biology: Expectations

• 9-month-olds have different expectations for animate and inanimate objects

• That living things adhere to basic principles of inheritance

• Essentialism: The view that living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are.

Naïve biology: nativism

Evidence for Nativist view

Knowledge of living things crucial for survival

Many species seem to have different expectations for livings vs. nonliving things

Cross-cultural similarities in beliefs about growth, inheritance, essentialism, etc.

Naïve biology: empiricism

Evidence for Empiricist view

Children receive lots of information about the biological world (through picture books, etc.)

Some cross-cultural differences in beliefs about living things

Naïve psychology

Shows ability to:

infer invisible mental states (e.g., you can’t see beliefs or desires).

Think about causal relations between mental states.

These abilities emerge early!

Theory of Mind

• An organized understanding of how mental processes such as intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions, and emotions influence behavior.

• False-belief understanding: The understanding that another can have a belief that is inaccurate, even when you have the true belief.

3 year old: fail

6 year old: pass

6 year old with ASD: debatable??

Theory of Mind: nativism

Evidence for Nativist view

Developmental trajectory similar cross-culturally

Evidence for ToM/intention reading in other species

ToM/intention reading emerges early in development

Theory of Mind: empiricism

Evidence for Empiricist view

Children with siblings show more advanced ToM at earlier ages

Ability to solve false-belief problems correlated with other abilities (counterfactual reasoning)