Developmental Psychology Exam 3

Racial Identity

Awareness of and sense of belonging to own racial group

Includes attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs

Development looks different for members of the dominant racial group and non-dominant racial groups (i.e. Black, Indigenous, and Children of color vs white children).

Infancy identity development

Becomes aware of self as separate being from caretakers

Gender: May be more comfortable/prefer with gender of person that is the same as primary caregiver

Race: Develops a cultural identity through caregiving interactions, household smells, sounds, experiences, etc. Begins to notice and respond to skin color cues (around 6 months old).

1-2 years of age

Gender: Curious about physical characteristics

Race: Begins absorbing socially prevailing stereotypes, attitudes, and biases about themselves and others. May show discomfort or fear or dislike toward a person with a different skin color

2-3 years of age

Gender: Children are aware of differences between boys and girls. Most children can identify themselves as a “boy” or “girl”. This term may or may not match the assigned sex at birth. Some children’s gender identity remains stable over their life, while others may alternate between identifying themselves as “boy” or “girl”, or even assume other gender identities at different times.

Race: Seeks labels for racial/ethnic identity. Develops theories about what causes a skin tone. Adult feral and non-verbal responses influence these beliefs. Understands that name calling and teasing about a person’s looks or background is unfair.

4-6 years of age

Gender: Children become more aware of gender expectations or stereotypes as they grow older. Some children may express their gender very strongly. For example, a child might go through a stage of insisting on wearing a dress every day or refusing to wear a dress even on special occasions. While many children at this age have a stable gender identity, gender identity may change later in life.

Race: Explores what it means to be from one race compared to another. Attends to the socioeconomic make-up of groups. Attend to messages from institutions about who makes decisions, who is in the leadership, who has access to resources, etc. Incorporates this information into a sense of group and individual identity.

6-8 years of age

Gender: Many children begin to reduce outward expressions of gender as they feel more confident that others recognize their gender. Children who feel their gender identity is different from the assigned sex at birth may experience increased social anxiety because they want to be like their peers but they don’t feel the same way.

Race: Continue to gain information (correct and incorrect) and develop feelings about human differences. Acknowledge the many aspects of their identity. Capable of making judgments about equity/unfairness/privilege. Begin to voice the “truths,” stereotypes, and biases they have been taught.

8+ years of age

Gender: Most children will continue to have a gender identity that matches the assigned sex at birth. Teens continue to develop their gender identity through personal reflection and with input from their social environment. Some gender-stereotyped behaviors may appear. You may not notice your teen or pre-teen making efforts to “play up” or “downplay” some of their body’s physical changes. As puberty begins, some youth may realize that their gender identity is different from their assigned sex at birth.

Race: Attitudes are more solidified. Takes powerful experiences to challenge and cause children to, not only rethink, but to change beliefs and behaviors.

Race: Teenage years (BICOC)

Early teens: More sensitive to experiences where race is an issue which may prompt them think more about their own race. More aware of race and racial group differences, especially with school transitions that expose the to more diverse peers. As social “cliques” become more prominent, friendships change and some youth choose to spend more time with peers with shared racial/ethnic background.

Mid to late teens: May reflect on what their race of ethnicity means to them and start looking for information and experiences. Some teens may involve themselves in friend groups, hobbies, or online activities to be around other teens from their same racial background. Typically aware of stereotypes-both positive and negative-associated with their racial group. This can make them more vulnerable to “stereotype threat.”

Racial socialization

White parents: Mostly silence are race or a colorblind approach.

Parents of color: Stratgies to rear competent and effective children in a society stratified by race (teaching them when to code switch or the idea “you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.”) Racially minoritized parents are more likely to explicitly talk about race with their children.

Most parents of all races still avoid talking about racial inequities because they think children won’t understand, haven’t noticed, or this it will reinforce biases.

Positive racial identity

An awareness of self as a racial being and sense of connection to history, heritage, and physical attributes.

Supporting positive racial identity for children of color

Self-love, a positive association with community of color, consistent positive messaging about physical and cultural attributes. A sense of pride in being connected to their families and communities through racial identity. A positive sense of their attributes, including name, skin tone, hair type, eye color, etc. A growing recognition of oppression on the basis of race, and preparedness to reposed to victimization with critical thinking, personal resilience, and the support of community.

Supporting positive racial identity for white children

Learning that their whiteness doesn't not make them “the norm". They can learn to accept their whiteness and use it to counteract injustice and contribute to a more equitable society. Acknowledge racial identity as a white person, and accurate language to define theirs and others’ racial identities. Openness to friendship and inclusiveness across racial difference and recognize positive qualities of others both similar and different from them. Recognize oppression on the basis of race, and develop a sense of responsibility to stand against it.

Ways to support racial identity development

1. Value & normalize racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Promote cultural pride.

2. Offer stories that reflect the children you work with.

3. Connect across time; talk about patterns and history.

4. Emphasize resistance. Dispel racial stereotypes.

5. Privilege insider experiences and perspectives.

   1. Prepare children for potential biases and what to do.

Sociocultural learning theory

Learning happens in a social context and relies on social understanding.

How do we test if infants understand others goals, desires, intentions?

Habituation

What are infants surprised by? What do they look longer at? (testing if infants know others’ have goals)

A new goal.

Testing if infants know others’ have goals

Do infants understand others have goal directed behavior?

Results: 3 month old infants looked equally at both scenarios. 6 month old infants preferred the new goal (they looked longer because they were surprised)

Conclusions: At 3 months old infants do not understand the intentions of others, but at 6 months old infants understand that the agent wants the teddy bear (they understand goal directed action).

Why are 6 month olds able to understand goal directed behavior?

Motor development.

At 3 months their motor development is limited infants cannot reach well. If infants were able to reach/grab toys, would they understand goal directed behavior earlier?

Infant deferred (delayed) imitation

Do infants imitate novel behaviors after 1 day delay/

Results: Social development: Infants understand others goals

Cogition: Shows at 9 months infants have deferred imitation and can access memories from at least a week

Infants separate goal from the means

Why would infants imitate this action? Infants notice that the researcher declines to use her hands, despite the fact they were free, suggesting infants were picking up on some other advantage in turning on the light box with their head.

This imitative learning is specific to humans. Primates do not imitate new strategies to achieve goals- they rely on motor actions already in their repertoire.

Can infants experience goal directed action earlier?

If infants have experience wit sticky mittens at 3 months old they learn that other have goal directed action earlier

What cues can infants pick up on?

Statistical learning and language

Broccoli and cracker study

Do toddlers (14-and 18-month olds) understand that others can have different desires than themselves?

Results: 14-month-olds didnt mean to understand what others want.

Something shifts by 18 months old, they understand different people like different things.

10 months old

Appear to understand preferences

What helps infants with understanding preferences?

Language comprehension skills contribute to their understanding.

Do preferences towards objects generalize to a new person?

No, they do not generalize to a new person.

Do infants reason about when and when not to imitate?

Infants rationally judge if they should turn on the light with their head or hands based on the constraints of the demonstrator

Altruism

Children are naturally altruistic even at the expense of their own fun and without their parents watching them.

Infants learn from the social world

Sociocultural theory- Vygotsky

Social learning theory- Bandura

What is important to learning?

Hands on, active experiences

Theory of mind

The understanding that others have personal thoughts, interests, motivations, and desires which may differ from our own. Includes different causes than we typically use to explain the actions of inanimate objects

False belief tasks

Used to examine the level of understanding of theory of mind possessed by an individual.

TofM: 2 year olds

Understand something about desires or wanting

TofM: 3 year olds

Still talk more about wanting than thinking, and often do no solve “false belief tasks”

TofM: 5 year olds

Solve these tasks- they have added the concept of belief to their theory of mind.

What can we conclude from false belief task?

It is difficult for children to realize that their own mind does not copy the world. (What theory comes to mind?- Dual Representation Theory

The mind represents the world. Therefore, the mind can misrepresent the world or be mistaken or have a false belief.

Looking time paradigm to test TofM-Can we use a different task (looking time paradigm) to see if younger kids understand theory of mind?

Results: Using a different task (one that doesn’t require language) we see that infants understand False-Belief tasks, younger than originally thought!! At 15-months, children understand other’s perspectives

False belief reasoning-Is there specialized brain regions to understand other’s thoughts?

Recruits brain regions associated with: Domain-general attention, response selection and inhibitory control and domain specific representations of the contents of others’ thoughts (of these regions the most selective is the RTPJ)

RTPJ

Right temporo-parietal junction

Specialized brain regions: Thinking about other thoughts

Austin Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

A condition beginning in early childhood in which a person shows persistent communication deficits as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior.

Those with ASD have impaired capacity for empathizing (knowing mental states of other people) and superior ability for systematizing (understanding rules that organize structure and function of object)

ASD prevalence

ASD is reports across all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

ASD is more than 4 times more common in boys than girls

Heritability of ASD

Biological: Highly heritable (200-400 genes involved in ASD)

Very active research area: Seeking to identify differences in brain structure and function (come work on amygdala and cerebella differences)

Very little support for environmental influences (not due to vaccines)

High functioning ASD

Previously called Asperger’s Syndrome

Results: Adult participants with Asperger’s syndrome: Pass explicit false belief tasks (Sally Anne task). Using more sensitive measures (Onishi & Baillargeon’s task) revealed atypical looking patterns. People with Asperger’s do not “mentalist” spontaneously. Can be trained to do so: “compensatory learning”

Which categories “matter"?

Evolution may have endowed us with certain “deeply rooted” categories: Language, race, age, and gender

What is the mechanism for gender preference?

Experience

What categories “matter”?

Results: Gender: Yes, Age: Yes, Race: No

Do young children prefer a person who previously spoke their native language?

Results: Infants preferred to accept toys from native-language speakers

Do young children prefer to be friends with a person who previously spoke their native language?

Results: Children preferred to select native-language speakers as friends. And children preferred to select native accent speakers as friends.

Friendship preferences: Race

3- to 5- year old white children preferred to “play with” children of their own race (chosen between two pictures)

Friendship preferences: Gender

4- to 10 year olds “liked” kids of their own gender more than opposite gender kids (rated photos from “not at all” to “like a lot”)

Friendship preferences: Age

Observed an age effect: Explicit biases of preferences decreasing

How do young children use social categories?

Results: Adults draw inferences based on personality trait. Children draw inferences based on social category. Developmental shift

Hostile attribution bias

Tendency to attribute hostile intentions where intent is ambiguous (interpretation is open to more than one meaning)

How do children interpret ambiguous information?

Hostile attribution bias

White children attribute negative intent 70% of the time

African-American children attribute negative intent 38% of the time

Do children selectively learn non-linguistic information from native accented rather than foreign accented speakers

4 to 5 year olds preferred to learn from native speaker over foreign accented speaker

Even when speakers were using nonsense speech, children preferred native speaker over foreign accented speaker

Evolutionary framework

Children prioritize language/accent over race to distinguish in-group social preferences

How do children choose friends when categories conflict?

Results: Accent was more important than race. Children preferred to be with friends with someone who was a different race who spoke with a familiar accent.

Race vs Language

Race based perferences might not be as robust as they appear

Language has stronger effects

Does neighborhood linguistic diversity predict infants propensity to learn from diverse social partners?

Results: Infants who lived in more linguistically diverse neighborhoods imitated more of the Spanish speakers actions.

Infants social learning is predicted by the diversity of the communities they live in.

Are there differences in how adolescents interpret ambiguous information based on diversity of schools?

Results: White children in non-diverse schools attribute negative intent 73% of the time

White children in diverse schools attribute negative intent 50% of the time

Implict signaling

Family: Parental language and actions

Society, neighborhood: School racial diversity, gendered bathrooms

Neighborhood diversity and school diversity affects these social category preferences and inferences

Positive stress response

Refers to the physiological state that is brief and mild to moderate in magnitude

Example: First day at a childcare center T

Tolerable stress response

Association with exposure to non normative experiences that present a greater magnitude of adversity or threat

Example: Death of a family member T

Toxic stress response

Stress that is caused by strong, frequent, or prolonged activation of the body’s stress response systems in the absence of the buffering protection of a supportive adult relationship.

Higher cognitive processes, brain structure and functioning, anxiety and depression, PTSD

Example: Child abuse or neglect

Implications and outcomes of children who experience high levels of prolonged stress can lead to

Brain development being delayed. Less developed PFC and hippocampus. More like to choose unhealthy lifestyle choices as a coping mechanism. Negative effects on immune system. High levels of cortisol inhibits creation of new neurons (neurogenesis)

Economic stress and parenting

Economic pressures may lead to increased martial conflict and parental depression. In turn, leads to less involved or hostile parenting. For kids living in poor neighborhoods correlates with increased risk for depression, loneliness, unregulated behavior, delinquency, and substance use. Moderated by relationship with others (friends, relatives, neighbors, etc)

Children in non-parental care situations

Separation from parents is a stressor and leaves children without a buffer

Separation of immigrant families upon entry to the US

Orphanages (Romanian orphanage study)

Harmful effects of parent-child separation

Increased risk of mental health problems into adulthood. Poor social and cognitive functioning. Insecure attachment. Disrupted stress reactivity. Impacts parents’ health as well. Impacts all children (young and adolescence), effects are cumulative. Long term effects even after reunion: Attachment, self-esteem, physical and psychological health

Do babies come into the world with emotions?

Blank slate: The human mind as a blank slate, knowledge comes from the experience with the world

Defining emotion

Emotions are not hardwired, universal reactions

Theory of constructed emotion: Psychological constructionism

Emotions are not innate

We use experience to make predictions and make sense of what’s happening in the world and with out body

Emotions consist of: Affect

A specific kind of influence—something’s ability to influence a person’s body state

Emotions consist of: Categorization

Determines what something is, why it is, and what to do about it

Developmental trajectory of affect: New born stage

Arousal states: Pleasant to unpleasant valence

Valence: Pleasant to unpleasant

Developmental trajectory of affect: Around 6 month

Discrete emotion theory: 6 basic emotions emerge

Developmental trajectory of affect: Around 2 to 3 years of age

Higher order emotions (e.g. self-conscious emotions)

Positive emotions

Happiness: Newborns smiles during REM sleep, physiological responses

6-10 weeks: First social smile-Infants smile more at people than objects. Evolutionary perspective: Survival tool gets the caregivers interest and affection

7 months: Smiles directed to familiar people

Negative emtions

First negative emotion: Generalized distress

By 6 months of age, affect differentiates into sadness, disguise, fear and anger

Fear of strangers

Before about 6 to 7 months, many infants can be comforted by a stranger

Develops around 6 or 7 months: depends on infants own temperament and strangers actions matter

Adaptive value: Parent as a “secure base”

Separation anxiety

Distress when caregiver leaves. Emerges around 8 months and peaks around 14 months and lasts until age 2

Crosscultural- onset and intensity vary

Developing sensitivity to emotional signals

4-9 months infants can match their expression to the emotional expressions of adults

Still Face experiments: Why is the baby distressed?

Violates infants expectations of a normal interaction

The mother regulates the infants behavior, when withdrawing, the mother no longer regulates the social affect state of the infant

Disrupts the infants goal for social engagement and connectedness

Is this response cry specific toward crying or to general noise/distress?

Results: Newborns cried in response to tape recorded cry of 5 day old infant but not to other noises

Innate distress response

May typically be limited to peers

Empathy

Though over time distress response is expanded to include other age people (usually around 10 and up)

Babies use emotion to judge uncertain contexts: What is the role of non-verbal communication in determining behavior in uncertain contexts?

Results: Social referencing: 12 month olds will use facial expressions to disambiguate situations

Social referencing

8 to 9 months- infants show understanding that others emotional expressions pertain to specific objects or events

Securely attached

When the mom returns: Babies are happy and go back to caregiver with delight In

Insecure/avoidant

When mom returns: Infants turn away from, less likely to seek comfort from caregiver In

Insecure/resistant

When mom returns: Infant simultaneously seeks comfort and pushes mom away D

Disorganized/disoriented

No consistent way of handling the stress of the strange situation

What defines a secure attachment

Social bonds and emotionality: Gaze (eye contact), vocalizations (what we say and how we say it), affect (how we express emotion), touch

What kind of baby you were shapes your emotionality now

Its important to recognize when internal state is being driven by external events becomes difficult to emotionally regulate

How much you are influenced by the outside environment has to do with interception and exteroception

SED milestones in early childhood

Empathy even in infants

Theory of mind

Self-control, self regulation, self management

Relationship with caregiver→ Relationships with peers

Parallel play and imitation play when young

Physical and cooperative play in middle childhood

Emotion regulation

Set of conscious and unconscious processes used to both monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions

Co-regulate emotions

In young infants caregivers provide comfort or distraction to help child reduce his distress

5 month old: Self regulate

Uses self-comforting behaviors: repetitive actions that regulate arousal by providing physical sensation

Self distraction: Looking away

What are the driving factors to these developmental changes in emotion regulation?

Maturation of the neurobiological systems: Development of prefrontal cortex which manages attention and inhibition of behavior

Changes in expectations from parents

Parental influences of emotional regulation

2-4year old children total emotion utterances correlate with the emotion labels that their mothers know and use

Children who’s parents discussed emotions more when children were 36 months old also had better emotion understand at 6 years of ag e

Difficulties managing emotions in adolescence

Adolescence is characterized by heightened affective reactivity and less cognitive control

Peak time for emotional difficulties to emerge: Depression, anxiety, suicidality

Risk taking behavior: Drug and alcohol use, risky driving, unprotected sex