Psychology of Childhood

What are the 3 key components of emotions?

Emotional recognition

Emotional understanding

Emotional regulation

What are the 6 basic emotions?

Happiness

Fear

Anger

Sadness

Surprise

Disgust

What are the facial cues of happiness?

Smiling, closed or open upturned mouth, raised cheeks, eyes squint slightly

What are the facial cues of anger?

Strongly furrowed brow, open square shaped mouth, flared nostril

What are the facial cues of surprise?

Eyes wide open, eyebrows eyes into arches, mouth open in round O shape

What are the facial cues of sadness?

Downturned corners of mouth, lips pushed together and possibly trembling, slightly furrowed brow

What are the facial cues of fear?

Eyes wide open, brows raised in the middle, corners of mouth pulled back into a grimace with mouth either open or closed

What are the facial cues of disgust?

Nose crinkled and nostrils flared, mouth open with lips pulled back and possible tongue sticking out

What are 6 complex emotions?

Guilt

Shame

Embarrassment

Pride

Jealousy

Shyness

At what age do complex emotions emerge in children?

2 years old (due to children recognising themselves as separate to other people)

What did Repacholi & Gopnik’s study show?

• 14 and 18 month old infants complete choose broccoli vs crackers

• Most infants had a clear preference to crackers

• Adult experimenters expressed disgust towards crackers and pleasure towards broccoli

• Experimenter then asked “can you give me some?”

• 14 month old gave crackers and 18 month old gave brocolli

What is social referencing?

Looking at adults facial expression to decide how to respond to novel ambiguous or potentially life threatening stimuli

What is emotional contagion?

Where infant demonstrates same emotion as their caregiver

What was used to study social referencing?

Visual cliff paradigm

What is vicarious learning?

Learning about objects or situations by observing others emotional reactions influencing future behaviour rather than guiding an immediate response

What age and what is Bowlby’s pre-attachment stage of development?

0-2 months

Little differentiation between familiar and unfamiliar people

What age and what is Bowlby’s attachment in the making stage of development?

2-7 months

Infants begin to recognise attachment figure

What age and what is Bowlby’s clear cut attachment stage of development?

After 7 months

Infants protest at being separated from caregiver + show stranger anxiety

What age and what is Bowlby’s goal corrected partnership stage of development?

Around 2 years

Increased indpendence and recognition of caregivers needs

What are the 4 attachment types?

Securely attached infants

Insecure avoidant infants

Insecure resistant infants

Insecure disorganised (introduced later)

What is the prevalence of securely attached infants?

62%

What is the prevalence of insecure avoidant infants?

15%

What is the prevalence of insecure resistant infants?

9%

What is the prevalence of insecure disorganised infants?

15%

What is the definition of co-regulation?

External process by which a caregiver provides the needed comfort or distraction to help a child reduce their distress

What is a self-comforting behaviour?

Repetitive actions that regulate arousal by providing a mildly positive physical sensation e.g. thumb sucking

What is a self distraction behaviour?

Look away from upsetting stimulus in order to regulate arousal levels

What is a transitional object?

Objects that help infants cope with emotional aspects of transitioning between dependence on a caregiver and increasing independence

What are the 3 ‘parts’ to anxiety?

Body

Thoughts

Actions

What are the 2 types of depression?

Bipolar

Unipolar

What is comorbidity?

Presence of one or more disorders occurring together

What are 4 problems with diagostic approach?

All or nothing approach

High comorbidity

Results in labelling

Tells us nothing about cause

What is temperament?

Individual differences in emotion, activity level and attention that are exhibited across context and present from infancy

What is heritability?

The proportion of variance in a population attributable to genetic differences between people

What are 4 limitations of adoption designs?

• Adoptees are not placed randomly into adoptive families, they tend to be chosen to provide environments that are low risk 

• Adoption studies may not be generalizable 

• Prenatal influences are not taken into account - whether biological mother smokes etc 

• Adoption is an unusual event in itself 

What are limitations of twin studies?

• Equal environments assumption

• Twin studies may not be generalisable to population at large 

• MZ twins may not be 100% genetically identical

What is clinical diagnostic approach?

Psychopathologies are considered to be discrete categories defined on the basis of criteria proposed by experts

What is empirical quantitative approach?

Psychopathology symptoms are assessed on a continuous scale, with the disorders being the extreme ends of the distribution

Example of internalising psychopathology

Anxiety and depression

Example of externalising pathology

Conduct problems, ADHD

What are callous unemotional traits?

Limited empathy, a lack of guilt and shallow affect

How many base pairs are in the human genome?

3 billion

What are the 3 approaches to temperament?

Paediatric approach

Personality tradition

Individual differences

What was the replication crisis?

Emerged in the ealry 2010s, refers to the inability of researvhers to reproduce results of many previoualy published studies

What is goodness of fit?

When the child’s capacities, motivations and temperament are adequate to master the demands, expectations and opportunities of the environment

What is poorness of fit?

When the child's characteristics are inadequate to master the challenges of the environment, and this leads to maladaptive functioning and distorted development

What area of play has the most research?

Pretend play

What are Parten’s 6 types of play?

• Unoccupied behaviour

• Solitary play

• Onlooker play

• Parallel play

• Associative play

• Cooperative play

What age and what are the characteristics of unoccupied behaviour (Parten’s types of play)?

Infancy+

Sensory activity that lacks focus or narrative 

What age and what are the characteristics of solitary play (Parten’s types of play)?

3 months - 2.5 years

Child playing alone in a focused and sustained way

What age and what are the characteristics of onlooker play (Parten’s types of play)?

2.5 - 3.5 years

Child observes other children's play without becoming involved themselves

What age and what are the characteristics of parallel play (Parten’s types of play)?

3.5+ years

Children playing in proximity but not together

What age and what are the characteristics of associative play (Parten’s types of play)?

4+ years

Children playing side by side, sharing resources and acknowledging, copying and working with one another but DIFFERENT goals

What age and what are the characteristics of cooperative play (Parten’s types of play)?

4.5+

Children playing together and sharing the same game

What are the 4 ways of measuring friendships?

Reciprocated friendships

Proximity

Friendship quality

Sociometric status

What is assimilation?

Incorporating new objects form the environment into an already existing schema

What is accomodation?

Modifying or reorganising mental structures in response to a new object or event

What is equilibriation?

A sequential pattern of self regulation achieving balance between maintaining existing schemas and modifying them to deal with new information from the environment

What is the sensorimotor stage of development?

Birth - 2 years

Understands the world through senses and actions

What is the preoperational stage of development?

2-7 years

Understands world through language and mental images

What is the concrete operational stage of development?

7-12 years

Understands the world through logical thinking and categories

What is the formal operational stage of development?

12 years onwards

Understands world through hypothetical thinking and scientific thinking

What is the theory of constructivism?

Children construct knowledge through interactions with the environment

Who has better working memory, adults or children?

Adults

What causes the increasing processing speed through adolescence?

Axons being covered in myelin

What are the 6 executive functions?

Activation/planning

Emotions

Focus

Self-monitoring

Flexibility

Memory

What are Sieglers overlapping waves?

Changes in strategies do not occur in a sequence of different stages but simultaneously

What are the 2 goals of strategies?

Automisation

Generalisation

What is sociocultural theory?

Theory that cognitive development comes from social interactions first

What is intermental?

Learning socially (through teachers or parents)

What is intramental?

Learning that comes from individual thinking

What are the mechanisms for sociocultural theory?

• Guided participation

• Social scaffolding and the zone of proximal development 

• Intersubjectivity (shared understanding)

• Joint attention

• Language and dialogue (social speech becomes inner speech)

What is object permenance?

Recognition that objects exist in the absence of any sensory perception

When does object permenance start to occur in babies?

8 months

What is primary circular reactions?

Repetitive pleasurable actions that occur between 1 and 4 months old involving babies own body

What are secondary circular reactions?

Interacting with something from the environment, usually 4-8 months

What is tertiary circular reactions?

Exploring different actions surrounding an object e.g. dropping it, usually around 12-18 months

What is Theory of Mind?

The capacity to attribute mental states (such

as desires, beliefs, knowledge) to others in

in order to predict or explain behaviour.