Child Development Exam 3

These flashcards cover key concepts related to infant attachment, emotional development, and significant research findings from the course material.

Tronick’s Still Face Procedure

A behavioral experiment where a parent maintains a still, unresponsive face, prompting the infant to engage in expressions and movements to elicit a response. When efforts fail, baby will turn away and cry

30

The best mother-infant pairs were in sync about ___% of the time during face to face interactions. Mismatches and repairs help develop a sense of resilience and agency in the child

Social Referencing

A process where infants look to caregivers' facial expressions and tone of voice to make decisions about approaching or avoiding situations.

8-10 months

What age do infants begin engaging in social referencing?

Emotional Eavesdropping

The ability of children to regulate their imitative behavior by observing emotional cues from interactions between other people.

Repacholi & Meltzoff’s Emotional Eavesdropping Experiment

An emoter entered, angrily said “That’s aggravating,” and left the room. The 18^th month old observing was significantly less likely to imitate the model’s action when the anger-present emoter was still in the room, but more likely to imitate the action when the emoter left the room. Found that toddlers use social cues directed at others

Izard’s view of Infant Emotions

Each emotion is expressed by a distinct group of facial muscles, and each facial expression reveals an infant’s underlying state

Irritability/crying

According to Bridges, what’s general distress marked by?

Smiling

According to Bridges, what’s pleasure marked by?

Neither positive nor negative emotion

According to Bridges, what’s interest marked by?

Reflexive smiles

Spontaneous smiles that depend on an infant’s internal state

Social smiles (3-8 weeks)

Infant smiles at faces, voices, light, touching, and gentle bouncing

faces, voices

What event elicits joy in infants?

blocked goal

What event elicits anger in infants?

novel and familiar, social and nonsocial

What event elicits interest in infants?

noxious tastes and smells

What event elicits disgust in infants?

loss of people and objects

What event elicits sadness in infants?

Harry Harlow’s Monkey Study

Opposed Freud’s belief that infants become attached because mother’s feed them. Found that monkeys spent more time with and ran to cloth comfy mom over wire mom with food. Also was more willing to explore novel objects

Tired, sick, scariness of threat

When may a child need more physical contact and support from their caregiver?

Secure Base

An attachment figure that a child uses to explore their environment and from which they can seek comfort and support.

Safe haven

Turning to attachment figure for comfort and support

Preattachment (birth-6 weeks)

Stage in attachment development where early behaviors promote proximity. Infants signal behaviors to draw others in for positive interaction (smiling, vocalizing). Caregivers respond to aversive behaviors, like crying, by coming to babies aid

birth to 6 weeks

When is the preattachment stage?

Attachment in the making (6 weeks - 6/8 months)

Stage in attachment development where infant prefers familiar people (smiles, laughs, babbles more for them) and familiar people are better and soothing

6 weeks to 6/8 months

When is the attachment in the making stage?

Clear-cut attachment (7 months to 18-24 months)

Stage in attachment development where infant is involved in active behaviors like approaching/following caregiver and has separation anxiety when separated. Parents serve as a secure base

7 months to 18-24 months

When does clear-cut attachment occur?

Reciprocal relationships (18-24 months)

Stage in attachment development where infant gains insight into their parents feelings and goals. Infant plays an increasingly active role in developing a working partnership with parent and has a decline in social anxiety due to gaining internal working model of attachment

Internal Working Model

A set of expectations from early caregiving experiences about the availability of attachment figures and their support during stress

Highly sensitive mother

Sees from infant’s POV and responds to subtle, minimal, and understated cues

Highly insensitive mother

Infant may need to give intense repeated signals to get a response, and when mother responds, its often inappropriate/incomplete

Strange Situation

An 8-stage observational study to measure the quality of attachment. The caregiver and stranger take turns entering, leaving, and being in the same room together with the child 

Securely attached child

In strange situation, this attachment style child will use parents presence as a secure base for exploration. During separation, the child shows signs of missing parents, and when the parent returns, the child happily greets them or seeks comfort

Securely child parent’s behaviors

Parents are responsive and sensitive to the child’s signals, affectionate, and initiate frequent close contact with the child

Avoidantly attached child

In strange situation, this attachment style child will explore readily with little care of parent. When parent leaves, they respond minimally, and during reunion, the infant looks away and actively avoids parents, or may stiffen/lean away when picked up

Ambivalent/resistant child parent’s behaviors

Parents are inconsistent or awkward in response to child’s distressed and overwhelmed with the task of caregiving

Ambivalent/resistant attachment style

In strange situation, child is visibly distressed, passive, and fails to engage in exploration with the parent’s presence. During separation they are unsettled and during reunion they may alternate bids of contact with tantrums without finding comfort in parent

Avoidant child parent’s behavior

Parents are insensitive to child’s signals, avoid close contact and rejects child’s bid for contact, and is irritable when the child demands contact

Avoidant

In western cultures, which attachment style has higher rates?

Ambivalent/resistant

In eastern/collectivist cultures, which attachment style has higher rates?

Disorganized Attachment Style

A pattern where a child exhibits contradictory or confused behaviors, indicating lack of a clear attachment strategy. They are fearful, confused, or contradictory when caregiver returns.

Hoffman et. al

Study where parents were taught to become more attuned and responsive to their child’s needs, and learned when to be a secure base or safe haven with Circle of Security. After 20-weeks, 40% of infants were insecurely attached (as opposed to 80) and 25% were disorganized (as opposed to 60)

Fathers

Function as a secure base supporting children’s play and exploration behaviors, allowing them to move toward their limits because the child knows they can rely on help if needed. If rough play shifts from intense delight to scary, the father can stop and calm the child 

HOME (Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment)

A checklist for evaluating the quality of a child's home environment through observational methods and parental interviews. Maternal sensitivity and positive HOME scores are predictors of secure attachment

Schaffer & Emerson

Study that showed infants have multiple attachment styles by 10 months and even more by 18 months. The attachments were structured in a hierarchy, varying in strength and importance. They’re most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals.

10%

Percentage of children living in grandparent-headed households

Romanian Orphanage

In the orphanage, 65% of children were disorganized with less than 20% securely attached. In the community sample, about 75% of children were securely attached 

Bucharest Early Intervention Project results

If children were placed in foster care before age 2, the percentage of securely attached was equivalent to the community sample. For children placed after two, the percentage of securely attached was slightly higher than those who remained in the orphanage.  

Bucharest Early Intervention Project

Half of infants in orphanages were randomly assigned to foster care. Before the assignment, 18% of children in the orphanage were securely attached, and 65% of children were securely attached in the community sample. After 42 months, they were assigned the strange situation.

Substage 1 (birth-1 month)

Modification of Reflexes. Reflexes like sucking, grasping, and orienting to look/listen

Substage 2 (1-4 months)

Primary Circular Reactions. Infants systematically repeat action with an interest in the outcome on infant’s body (ex. making saliva bubbles).

Substage 3 (4-8 months)

Secondary Circular Reactions. Actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding external world (ex. wiggling crib by kicking feet). Infant can retrieve an object if its peeking out under the cover

Substage 4 (8-12 months)

Coordination of Secondary Schema. Coordinating two independent actions to achieve an end. Encounter an obstacle and must remove is to achieve end  (ex. Push aside barrier to reach object (one scheme) then reach for object (second scheme)). A not B error occurs

Substage 5 (12-18 months)

Tertiary Circular Reactions. Explores novel features of an object for their own sake and vary actions to discover a new phenomenon and see what will work (ex. Continuing to twist wrist to pull object between bars until it works)

Substage 6 (18-24 months)

Invention of New Means through Mental Combination. Child can use mental symbols to represent object and events, and can now try out different options in their mind to act out the right ones. (ex. Child looks at object not being able to fit through bars of crib and strategically thinks of how to orient it right, then carries out the action). Infant can keep track of an objects location if its hidden and switches sides with another blanket (invisible displacement task)

A not B error

A toy is hidden under Blanket A while the baby watches. The baby lifts blanket A and successfully retrieves it. Then, the toy is hidden under Blanket B while the baby watches, but the baby lifts Blanket A expected the toy to be there again. This error occurs during substage 4

Invisible displacement task

Object is hidden inside your hand before hiding it under the blanket. Piaget closed his hand around a pencil, then covered his hand in a beret, handkerchief, and jacket and asked his daughter find a pencil. Piaget’s daughter solved his in substage 6

Baillargeon’s Rotating Screen

Baillargeon shows a rotating screen and a block that was supposed to inhibit the screens movement. When the block went through the screen (impossible event) the infant should be shocked. If they are shocked then the infant recognizes that two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time and objects continue to exist when out of sight

Adele Diamond

Believed infants made the A not B error because they are unable to inhibit a dominant action. They are not able to stop themselves and inhibit a previously successful action because of their brain development stage

C not B error

The hand with a ball pass through three clothes, ending at cloth C. The object was left under cloth B, but the infant looks under cloth C, not using the lump to infer where the object was

Riviere and Lecuyer

Study that put wristbands on infants. Infants with the weighted wristbands made the C not B error only 5% of the time as opposed to 50% without. This suggests that the weights inhibit their action

Wellman et al (Calculator)

The experimenter says they dropped their calculator and that she must have dropped it while setting up the play yard. Most 3, 4, and 5 year olds searched at one of the locations on the edge of the play yard. However, the 4- and 5-year-olds tended to look in more places in the middle

Wellman et al (Camera)

The experimenter took picture of the child at location three (sandbox) and discovered the camera was missing at location 7 (arm reach). All three groups went back to the sandbox to look for the camera. The 4 and 5 year olds searched in the critical path where they played, while 3 year olds looked outside this area

Symbolic play

Child evokes an absent object through the car and the car symbolizes the plan through the actions he introduced (leaf as plate, toy car as plane)

Deferred imitation (may emerge 18 months or earlier)

When the first imitation does not occur when the model is present but occurs after the model has been absent for some considerable time. (ex. A child mimicking their parents sweeping with a toy broom one day while playing)

Meltzoff et al.

Studied whether children would imitate the unsuccessful action of the adult or read through the action and imitate what the adult was trying to do successfully. This study showed that 18-month infants imitate what the adult was intending to do

DeKlerk et al

Found that infants were able to imitate the model when the model was gazing at them rather than away

Imitation

Allows for shared feelings or agreement with others. It tests whether parents are responding to the infant. It also can be a social game and offer the child a way to connect with others

4.5 months

Age of when infant recognizes the sound patterns of their name

6 months

Age of when infant can pick out their name out of running speech

Bortfeld et al.

Study where two pairs of 6 month olds, Maggie and Hannah, were given 12 passages. Half had the word Maggie before “bike” and half had Hannah before “cup.” Infants were more likely to look in the direction of a speaker if the word it played had followed their name (e.g., Maggie looked toward “bike” more than “cup”) This supports the argument that infants can use familiar words to help them divide the speech stream

Social-pragmatic approach to world learning

Words are used in context of routine events, and this helps the child to work out their meaning. Words are associated with the activity, without always actually knowing meaning of individual word

Phonological Development

acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language 

Semantic Development

the learning of a system for expressing meaning in a language, including word learning. Can be difficult to figure out meaning of word because of all the possibilities the word could mean 

Syntactic Development

learning the rules that specify how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives) can be combined 

Whole object assumption

Start with the assumption that the word refers to the whole object rather than its parts 

Gaze for learning language

18 month olds realize that where the speaker is looking is a better indicator of a novel word’s referent than where the child is looking.

Current occurrences for learning language

Words refer to what is present, what is currently happening

Novel name - nameless object

A new word should be affixed to the unnamed novel object (ex. Familiar teddy next to strange toy) 

Fast mapping

the way in which children quickly form an idea of the meaning of an unfamiliar word they hear in a familiar and highly structured social interaction. Begins after children have vocabulary of 50-75 words. Once it begins, children can rapidly comprehend words

Carey and Bartlett

Study where preschool class children had some color words, but none knew the word olive. When asked to bring the chromium tray – all children brought over the right one over the familiar blue tray

Syntactic bootstrapping

the strategy of using the grammatical structure of the whole sentence to figure out the meaning (ex. “Look! Thats a Gavagai!” Thats a ____ clues that the word is an object) 

Gelman and Markman

Presented 4-year-olds with four pictures. Shows 4-year-olds use the grammatical structure of the utterance to work out the meaning of feb 

Transitive verb

an action verb that expresses an activity being performed on an object

Intransitive verb

Action verb that does not require another object to make sense

Vygotsky’s view of communicative pointing 

Child learns that pointing to something signals a social situation directed at another person. Begins around 11-12 months

Kraddling experiment

Showed 2 year olds a video of a duck pushing a bunnys head down while both the duck and bunny are moving their arms in circles. Found that they interpret “the duck is kraddling the bunny” and “the duck and bunny are kraddling” differently. Shows infants use syntactic frame to work out meaning of verb

10-15 months

Age of when most children say their first words. Counts only if utterance resembles the word child is trying to approximate and it has to have a fixed meaning (babbling mama doesnt count)

Context bound

Only use word in a specific context (look out window and associate it with seeing cars, and say “car)

Underextending 

Restricting the use of a more general word to a more specific instance (seeing lots of cats, but only knowing cat as a black cat)

Overextension 

Use of a single word to represent a variety of objects (going to aquarium and thinking all animals are fish). Child may not have vocabulary yet for word they’re actually trying to say