dev psych exam 2

Piaget

invented the field of cognitive development and applied a detailed study of animal behavior to children

Piaget’s 4 stages

sensorimotor stage: 0-2 yr

Pre-operational: 2-7 yr

Concrete operations: 7-11 yr

Formal operation: 11+ yrs

Piaget’s stance on child’s knowledge

infant is a blank slate (don’t know anything, have to learn everything from scratch); No mental representations

when do mental representations fully develop?

by 24 months

schemes

organized ways of making sense of experience; change w/ age

adaptation

involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. It consists of two complementary activities: assimilation and accommodation

organization

occurs internally, apart from the external environment; children form new schemes, which they rearrange to link with other schemes, forming an interconnected cognitive system

assimilation

interpret the world to match the current schemes already in your head in your head

accomodation

change the way you think about things; creating new schemes or adjusting old ones to better fit what we observe in the environment

progression of abilities: birth-1 month

newborn reflexes

progression of abilities: 1-4 months

simple motor habits centered around infant’s own body, limited anticipation of events

progression of abilities: 4-8 months

actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding world; imitation of familiar behaviors

progression of abilities: 8-12 months

intentional or goal-directed behavior; Ability to find hidden object in location where it was hidden previously, imitation of behaviors slightly different from those infant usually performs

progression of abilities: 12-18 months

exploration of properties of objects by acting on them in new ways; imitation of new behaviors; ability to search several locations for a hidden object

progression of abilities: 18-24 months

mental representations (internal depictions of objects & events) & deferred imitation

sensorimotor

• ‘think’ with senses and body–not with mind

• No mental representations

• 0-2 yrs

• circular reactions

circular reactions

baby accidentally discovers a new experience caused by their own motor activity

object permanence

understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight

when do babies start to master object permanence?

8-12 months

what does it mean when babies start to master object permanence?

mental representations are starting to form because they understand that the object still exists

AB task

• Child able to reach an object several times in one hiding place, but when it is moved to a new hiding place they still look for it at the first one

• Start to succeed around 8-12 months

deferred imitation

ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who are not present

• Makes make-believe-play possible

• Develops around 18-24 months

weaknesses of Piaget’s theory

• Underestimated infant’s abilities

  • Core knowledge theory

• Not specific about the processes of change

  • Information processing theory

• Ignored social & cultural factors; viewed cognitive development as individual & universal

  • Didn’t factor in how the people in an infant’s life may influence development

  • Sociocultural theories

core knowledge theory

• Infants are not a blank slate, there is innate knowledge in core domains

• Humans evolved to solve specific problems essential to survival

• Domains support rapid cognitive development

Did Piaget underestimate children’s abilities?

yes

core domains of innate knowledge

domain of physical objects (inanimates), number, space, living things (animates), language

Baillargeon’s rotating screen experiment

• Violation of expectation/”looking time”

• Screen rotates back in forth in front of baby, then object is placed behind it and screen starts moving back–two possibilities:

• Possible event–Screen rotates and stops where object is

• Impossible event–Screen rotates and goes all the way down as if object is not there, but when it comes back up the object is still there

• Babies as young as 4 months look longer at the impossible event

• Indicates that they remember the object is there

core domain of physical objects (inanimates)

• Includes object permanence, object solidity (one object cannot move through another), gravity (object will fall w/o support)

  • In first few months infants appear to have some awareness of all of these things

• By 4 months, babies know objects have to move in a continuous path 

• By 7 months babies know objects cannot move on their own

core domain of number

• Addition and subtraction Wynn study 

  • First infants saw a screen raised in front of a toy animal. Then an identical toy was added behind the screen, next the researchers presented 2 outcomes 

  • In the EXPECTED outcome, the screen dropped to reveal 2 toy animal

  • In the UNEXPECTED outcome the screen dropped to reveal 1 toy animal 

• 5 month olds shown the unexpected outcome look longer then the infants shown the expected out come which shows that infants can discriminate the quantities of “one” and “two” and suggest that they can do simple subtraction

• babies can discriminated quantities up to 3

information processing

• generally assume that we hold information in three 3 parts of the cognitive system for processing: the sensory store, the short-term memory store, and the long-term memory store

• As information flows between the stores, we use MENTAL STRATEGIES to operate on and transform it, increasing

task analysis

break down cognition & problem solving tasks into smaller, more specific cognitive processes

AB task task analysis

1. Mentally represent object

2. Continue to remember object

3. Plan: reach for cover, move cover, reach for object

4. Executing each step as you remember entire plan and object

5. (reaching is effortful, it was recently learned)

6. Maintain attention/inhibit distractions

7. (repeated 3x) (then hidden at B)

8. Represent object in new location AND inhibit memory of old location

9. Plans, reach, execute while inhibiting previously rehearsed and successful action

object permanence task analysis

1. Mentally represent object

2. Continue to remember object

3. Plan: reach for cover, move cover, reach for object

4. Executing each step as you remember entire plan and object

5. (reaching is effortful, it was recently learned)

6. Maintain attention/inhibit distractions

encoding

getting things into the attentional spotlight

sensory store

momentarily stores sights & sounds

• Disappears after a few seconds unless you use mental strategies to encode it into short-term/working memory

short term/working memory

 the number of items a person can briefly hold in mind while also engaging in some effort to monitor or manipulate those item

• “Attentional spotlight”

• Retained briefly so we can actively work on it to reach our goals // “mental workspace” used to accomplish daily activities

• Limited in storage & time

long term memory

Long term information, relatively permanent compared to short term

executive functioning

Effortful control of attention, inhibition, working memory, selecting/revising strategies flexibly

central executive

• manages cognitive system’s activities

  • Includes conscious part of mind

  • Directs flow of information

  • Implements basic procedures

  • Enables complex, flexible thinking

  • Coordinates incoming information w/ information in system

  • Controls attention/inhibition

  • Selects, applies, monitors strategies

processing speed

increased by myelination and increased connectivity among brain regions: everything (retrieval encoding, strategy selection, etc) get faster and working memory increases because of basic brain development (key concept is myelination)

strategies such as rehearsal, selective attention

• Not innate

• Help with memorization

• Over time we discover these strategies

automaticity

ability to do a task without thinking about it (do it automatically) because it has been done so many times before; As skills (ex reaching, grasping, etc) become automatic, resources are freed up

content knowledge (experience)

Once you start learning something, it's easier to learn more about that thing

maturation

process of growth/development that is learned as a process of aging

Vygotsky - importance of social interactions and culture-specific skills in development

• People and culture and central to development, not peripheral

• Cognitive abilities including voluntary attention, category formation, problem solving originate in social interaction

zone of proximal development

tasks that a child be do with help

scaffolding

providing a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than they could on their own

intersubjectivity

• mutual understanding people share during intentional communication

  • Establishing a connection, awareness of others

  • Eye contact, words, etc

  • Basis of joint attention

joint attention

2 people paying attention to something at the same time 

• w/ more mature people=vehicle for master activities, think in ways that have meaning in their culture

• Building block of intersubjectivity

sounds that babies prefer

complex sounds (voices, noise) to pure tones, mother’s voice to an unfamiliar one, speech that uses a slow, high-pitched, expressive voice with a rising tone at the end

what can babies discriminate in sound?

syllable stress, ascending tones from descending tones, two languages if rhythmically different, most speech sounds in the world’s langauges

speech sounds that differ across langauges

tuh & duh, rip & lip, d & D

how is newborn’s ability to perceive sounds measured?

nonnutritive sucking (dishabituate for new sound)

tuning/perceptual narrowing

how a baby’s brain fine-tunes its auditory system during the first year of life to specialize in the specific sounds of their native language

• 6-12 months

• Infants lose ability to perceive sounds in other languages

• Strengthen perception of native language sound

• interesting consequence for babies adopted internationally

behaviorism

regards directly observable events—stimuli and responses—as the appropriate focus of study and views the development of behavior as taking place through classical and operant conditioning

conditioning

learning by association; behavior modified with reinforcement or punishment

properties of words

symbolic, arbitrary, conventional

symbolic

words are symbols that stand for things in the world

arbitrary

Words have no meaningful relationship to their definition–you have to learn the names of things through other people who speak the language

conventional

We have to decide as a social convention that a word means what it says it does

the mapping problem

the ambiguity a child faces when trying to a figure out what a new word means; solved by using a combination of social cue & inherent biases (join attention & pragmatic cues)

baldwin deoupled labeling experiment

Concluded that babies don’t learn words by “cooccurence” (hearing a word the same time you are looking at an object)

Why?

• We have to know that the other person is intentionally calling the object something–conveying referential intent

• Joint attention is the only way infants will map words up until around 18 months

• The earlier and more babies do it the more their vocabulary will grow

coupled labeling

use novel objects (things babies are unlikely to have a name for) and novel words (things that seems like they could be words in english but are probably not)

• Person with child labels object with novel word

• Afterwards, baby is asked to label the object and is able to

decoupled labeling

person on other side of screen where baby can see but not hear them

• Pretends to be on the phone talking

• Waits until baby is looking at a toy, and labels the object with a novel word even though the baby can’t see them

• After baby is asked to label the object but can’t→they don’t think a disembodied voice is related to what they are looking at

cooing

vowel like noises

when do babies start to coo

around 2 months

expressions of happiness

smiles—response to internal states at first, social smiles develop around 8-10 weeks (affected by culture)

fear/anxiety

Stranger anxiety: expression of fear towards unfamiliar adults

anger/frustration

• Becomes distinct around 4-6 months

• Increases as infants show goal directed behavior: tend to see anger when baby wants something they can’t have or tries to achieve a goal they can’t achieve

sadness

• Rare but can be seen around 2-6 months

• Often experienced when separated from caregiver for a long period of time

self-conscious/second order emotions

• develop around 18-24 months

• you have to be aware of yourself as a separate entity, think about how people around you judge

• Guilt, shame, pride

secure base behavior

use of caregiver as point from which to explore; infant ventures into environment but frequently returns to caregiver for emotional support

social referencing

actively seeking emotional information from a trusted person in an uncertain situation; using somebody else’s emotions to gage a situation

• Sign that baby trusts person enough to use their emotions as a way to interpret a situation

emotion regulation (aka self regulation)

Don’t just pretend not to feel a certain way, but genuinely change emotion (especially when it's an inappropriate emotion for the situation); refers to the strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goal

aspects of emotional regulation

• Display of emotions: changing how you look 

• Subjective experiences: You're really angry but you need to be in class focusing and it doesn’t help to be angry; you have to get rid of those emotions 

• Emotion-related cognitions: stop thinking about the thing that makes you angry 

• Physiological correlates: being angry increases blood pressure and pulse so you want to control that 

• Behavior: you don’t want to act out

social competence

ability to achieve personal goals in social interactions while maintaining positive relationships with others

• Basically the ability to engage in effective and appropriate social interactions with others 

• If you have bad emotional regulation then you will also lack social competence

coregulation

when an infant is soothed by someone else; often involved physical regulation (ocking them, singing to them, etc)

when do infants start to learn self comforting/soothing

6-8 months (but they are still highly dependent on others to help them regulate their emotions)

behavioral distraction

Gradually become better at focusing attention away from distressing stimulus

cognitive strategies

• Mental distraction

  • Ex tell yourself to calm down, think about something different

• Recasting: Reframing the situation to mean something different

  • Ex during a scary movie thinking that its all fake

final step of regulation development

selection of appropriate regulatory strategies

temperament

Cluster of traits related to emotional expression & reactivity (ex are you highly expressive, do you have strong or lowkey response), activity, attention/focus (how long do they pay attention to a goal or focus on something); Kind of like personality for babies, focus on individual differences

traits temperament is related to

• Emotion expression and reactivity 

  • How intensely do yu express your emotions?

• Activity 

  • How physically active the baby is?

• Attention/focus 

  • How long can they stay focused on a goal?

how do babies get their temperament?

they are born with it

Rothbart & Bates 5 independent dimensions & questionnaire

• fear/fearful distress

  • When there is a loud sound, does the baby tend to become distressed, remain calm?

• Distress at limitations (aka irritable distress, due to anger or frustration)

  • Does baby become upset if they can’t reach something they wanted

• Attention span, focus, persistence (task/goal oriented)

  • Does baby quickly move on from a task

• Activity level

  • Do they move their arms & legs a lot when they’re seated, do they crawl around a lot?

• Smiling and laughter (positive affectivity)

  • Showing joy & laughter

  • The opposite is not anger/fear/sadness, it is flat/serious affect

• + effortful control/regulation 

  • Less relevant for the first couple years of life

Thomas & Chess 3 types of children

easy child, difficult child, slow to warm up child

*Not all children can be put neatly into one of the classifications, but about ⅔ can

easy child

• 40%)

• High in positive affectivity

  • Smiling, laugher

• Easy recovery from distress

  • If upset or fearful, able to calm themselves down easily

• Regular routines

  • Sleep longer at night than during the day, get tired at the same times, get hungry at the same times

difficult child

• (10%)

• High in fearful distress & slow to adjust ot new experiences

• React negatively & intensely when distressed

  • It took time for them to adjust to situations 

• Irregular routines

slow to warm up child

• 15%)

• Low activity, lowkey reactions to environment

• Low in positive affectivity

• High in fearful distress/inhibited

  • They are shy about new situations 

• Eventual adjustment after repeated exposure

follow up with difficult children

(70%) developed behavior problems by school age

follow up with slow to warm up children

50% showed adjustment problems in middle school

follow up with easy children

18% developed either behavior problems or adjustment problems

dunedin study

follow negative, unregulated children throughout their lives

dunedin study—adolescents

Had more problems getting along with peers, more likely to engage in illegal behaviors/get in trouble with the law, break rules, skip school, or get into fights

dunedin study—21 year olds

More likely to have conflict w/ living partners, more likely to be unemployed, have less social support, more prone to anxiety

dunedin study—32 year olds

Already more likely to have poorer physical health or metabolic syndromes, less wealth (not making as much money), substance use issues, or to have committed criminal offense & be involved in gambling

twin method

Behavior genetics are studied using MZ and DZ twins and their heritability

heritability

the extent to which individual differences can be explained by genetic references

Equation: heritability = 2(MZ-DZ)

shared environments

Environmental differences between families (shared by family members), make children more different across families but more similar within families

Equation: MZ-heritability

non-shared environment

Environmental differences within families, things that happen inside or outside of the home are difference, having different friends, playing different sports, could be biological (one had a virus or was exposed to teratogens the other wasn’t)

Equation: 1-MZ