PSYC102 UBC Final Darko Odic

Nativism (Innate)

Children are born with specific abilities or will automatically gain them with maturity

Empiricism (Learned)

Children must learn certain skills with experience and practice and would never have them without learning (e.g. reading)

Stage-theories

children develop through a series of universal “stages”, different abilities come from different stages

Continous-theories

development is fluid and countinous and any ability can emerge at any time

Cross-sectional design

recruit participants of different ages/cohorts at the same time and study them at the same time

Longitudinal Design

we recruit one group of participants and then retest them as they get older, comparing their performance to their past selves

Looking Preference

a baby can choose to look at one of two things, and a preference for one display over another is measured

Habituation

Exposing a participant to the same stimulus again and again until they are bored, and then presenting them with something similar but new. If babies can distinguish between the two similar things, they “dishabituate” and look longer.

Sandbox Task

Some number of toys are buried in a sandbox and the child has to remember where they are buried and dig for them

Prenatal Development

development that occurs in the 40 weeks from conception to birth (i.e. while the baby is in the womb)

how many stages in prenatal stage

3: germinal→embryonic→fetal

Germinal stage

first 2-3 weeks of pregnancy, cells rapidly divide but there are no organs

Embryonic stage

3-8 weeks of pregnancy, organs begin developing

Fetal stage

9-38 weeks of pregnancy, brain especially develops

Teratogens

chemical agents that impair or alter prenatal development (e.g. alcohol, tobacco)

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

a disorder caused by exposure to ethanol alcohol during the prenatal period; symptoms: low body weight, brain damage, distinctive facial feature

Down Syndrome (DS)

neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a third copy of chromosome 21; one of the most common types of chromosome abnormalities

Williams Syndrome (WS)

Rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion of ~26 genes on chromosome 7, occuring in 1:15k births

Perceptual Development

the development of seeing, hearing, touching, etc.

Motor Development

The development of bodies and ability to move

Perceptual Narrowing

Increased sensitivity for things that occur often in the environment, and the decreased sensitivity for things that do not

Own-species effect

Young babies (<6 months) are equally capable of distinguishing human and non-human faces apart, while older infants (>9 months) can only differentiate human faces 

Own-race effect

young babies (<6 months) are equally capable of distinguishing faces of humans of all ethnicities, while older infants (>9 months) lose sensitivity for ethnicities they do not encounter in everyday life)

Infant-directed speech (IDS):

the slower, highly inflected and wide-pitch pattern of speech typical when people speak to infants (“baby talk”) 

Sensitive Periods

periods during which exposure to experience has the biggest effect on development. 

Imprinting

 some birds follow the first moving stimulus they see 13-16 hours after hatching 

Cephalocaudal Rule

 growth and motor emerge from head to feet 

Proximodistal rule

 growth and motor control emerge from the center to the periphery. 

Posture-specific learning

whenever babies learn a new method of movement (e.g. sitting, crawling, walking) they need to re-learn what is dangerous in their environment 

Kitty Carousel Experiment

two kittens were raised experiencing only the same striped enclosure. During training, one kitten could walk around, while the other was passively carried 

Attachment

emotional and social bonds that forms between individuals

Wire mother experiments

baby monkeys were raised choose between one of two ‘mothers’: wire mother gave food, cloth mother gave warmth and comfort→ monkeys chose cloth mother over wire

Strange Situations

behavioural test that examines children’s typical attachment style for a specific caregiver (most often the mother)

Secure attachment (SS)

Some distress when caregiver leaves, reacts to return by calming down (60-70%)

Avoidant Attachment (SS)

Doesnt react when caregiver returns and leaves

Anxious (Ambivalent) Attachment

High distress when caregiver leaves and returns

Disorganized Attachment (SS)

lack of coherent coping, <5% of kids

Parenting style

characteristic patterns of parenting, including emotional reactivity, reward and punishment tendencies, routine setting etc.

Temperament

characteristic patterns of emotional reactivity, including irritability, fearfulness etc, tempermental children tend to be less secure, likely by making their parents more reactive as well

Socialization-selection effects

early life experiences are shaped more by environment/socialization, while later effects are shaped by selecting of specific environments

False/Sally Anne Task

children are told a story about Sally who hides a toy in a basket and leaves the room; Anne comes in and moves the toy from the basket to a box. When Sally returns, where will she look for the toy

False/Sally Anne Task results

Children younger than ~4.5 years “fail” this task, and believe Sally will look where Anne placed it; Children older than ~5 “pass” and reason, like adults, that Sally will look to where she last placed it: used to argue that young children lack a full theory of mind and must learn it

Helper/Hinderer Infant Experiment

Infants see one agent who helps and one who hinders a third party; then they get to choose which one they want to play with or look at

Helper/Hinderer Infant Experiment results

By 6 months, infants show a strong preference for the helper puppet; The task generalizes to other domains of helping, like opening boxes or finding hidden objects

Transgression tasks

children are given an opportunity to secretly cheat to win a prize (most children do), and we then ask if they cheated or not

Abstract Thinking

to represent, mentally manipulate, and communicate about things that are not in our immediate perception.

Sensorimotor stage

the first stage, marked by the absence of abstract though; the only things in their minds are children can perceive are right here, right now, including their own bodies 

Object Permanence

Knowing that objects exist even when no longer perceived; Piaget argued sensorimotor babies lack this ability

A not B task

A baby is given a toy to play with. The toy is hidden under one of two blankets or hidden behind an object. Despite wanting the toy back, the baby will not look for it under the blanket; this implied that sensorimotor children do not think that an object continues to exist once it is out of perception 

Schema

a small bit of abstract knowledge about how the world works (e.g. that objects fall down when they unsupported them 

Assimilate (Schema)

 integrating information into existing schema 

Accommodate (Schema)

changing or making new schemas once new information is

Preoperational stage

the second stage during which children understand the permanence and abstraction of objects and events, but still struggle to think about minds of others, or to logically manipulate objects in their mind 

Conservation

logically reasoning that quantities don't change from simple transformations

Concrete Operational Stage

 the third Piagetian stage during which children become capable of doing basic logical thinking (e.g. reversibility of perception) but still cannot imagine the world to be different than it is)

Counterfactual Rule Task

a child is told a counter-intuitive rule and asked to predict– if the rule is true– what will happen. Concrete operational children focus on the reality of the situation, not on what would logically happen if the rule was true 

Formal Operational Stage

 the final Piagetian Stage during which children become fully capable of logical and abstract thinking are no longer dominated by their own perceptions or intuitions about the world 

Physics of Object

 if shown an object that is impossibly balanced, babies will be surprised 

Morality

 babies as young as six months understand the concept of pro vs. anti-social 

Number

newborns have been shown to be able to represent and think about numbers

How many Piaget stages are there?

Four

Language

Four levels in language

Phonemes, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics

Phonemes

building blocks of words

Syntax

rules that generate meaning from words

World order

Morphology

Semantics

meaning we derive from complete sentences

Pragmatics

the extra-linguistic inferences we make from the manner in which we say sentences, or from information that we include or exclude

Language acquisition

the developmental process of learning language, mastering all levels from phonemes to pragmatics

Production/Comprehension Asymmetry

children begin understanding/comprehending the language they are learning earlier than they start producing their own sentences.

In utero

by the fifth month of pregnancy, fetuses have a developed auditory system that can listen and begin identifying the phonemes of the language that are spoken around the baby

Perceptual Narrowing

babies initially can perceptually hear all possible phonemes, but their perceptual systems slowly change to learn only those spoken by their language community.  

Statistical Learning

a learning mechanism that identifies which sounds tend to co- occur/follow each other very often, and which do not. Sounds that co-occur together frequently are assumed to be words.

Fast Mapping

children map a word to a meaning after only a single exposure.

Mutual Exclusivity

Children assume that every object has only a single word, and therefore assume that a word they have never heard before goes with something they don’t know what to call.

Bilingualism

being proficient in speaking and comprehending two or more languages (L1 and L2)

Delayed production (Bilingualism)

most bilingual children begin uttering their first words 2 – 4 months later than monolinguals.

Slower acquisition of syntax (Bilingualism)

most bilingual children go through a period where their syntactic understanding of L1 and L2 is lower than monolinguals

Reduced mutual exclusivity (Bilingualism)

bilinguals can’t use mutual exclusivity as reliably because every object in the world does have multiple labels.

Dual Language Mastery (Bilingualism)

once they are about 4 – 6 years-old, bilinguals have fully caught up to monolinguals, and are now fully proficient in both languages.

Inhibitory Control (Bilingualism)

inhibitory control and other executive control functions are slightly better in bilinguals compared to monolinguals.

Benefits for Aging (Bilingualism)

bilingual brains show reduced effects of aging, including in preserving long-term memory and inhibitory control for longer periods of time; these benefits extend to both linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.

Medical Student Syndrome

common exprience of perceiving oneself as having the symptoms that one is studying about

Option 5 Definition (Clinical Disorder)

mental illness is a cultural myth we use to filter and control people who violate societal norms (e.g. Thomas Szasz)

Clinical/Mental Disorders

A syndrome characterized by clinically significant distress or disability, not due to common stressors, reflecting dysfunction in psychological, biological, or developmental processes, and not simply socially deviant behavior.

The Diagonistic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition text Revision (DSM-5-TR)

main classificationn system for diagnosing recognizing clinical disorders

Features of the DSM-5-TR

Developed by researchers, regularly updated, criteria and decision rules, “Athetheoritical”/Descriptive (it is tool for describing/diagnosing, not for explaining why disorder occurred.)

Comorbidity

co-occurence of two or more diagnoses within the same person; reduces diagnostic validity, especially if disorders are separable

Anxiety

state of apprehension and tension in which a person anticipates upcoming danger, catastrophe or misfortune

Anxiety Disorders

isorders in which excesive, irrational, automatic, and impairing anxiety is the primary manifesting system

Specific Phobia

marked, persistent, and excessive fear and/or anxiety in presence or anticipation of specific objects, activities and or situations (i.e. phobias)

Fear Conditioning

theory that phobias are caused by associating a particlar stumulus with a negative event through trauma

Little Albert Exp.

6 month old baby not previously afraid of white rats was conditioned by pairing loud noise every time he touched the rat; his fear generalized to other white furry things

Preparedness Theory

theory that we are evolutionarily programmed to learn certain things even with very minimal experience

The Garcia Effect

when a rat mildly posioned once after drinking sugar water they will upon recovering never again drink sugar water again (even if they were actually poisoned by something else.)

Social Anxiety Disorder

excessive anxiety around being judged by others, often to the point that the person avoids all social situations

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

an anxiety disorder characterized by chronic and excessive worry accompanied by three or more of the following: fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension and sleep disturbance for more than 6 months.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (ocd)

a clinical disorder marked: repetitive, instrusive and irrational thoughts and worries (obsessions), ritualistic behaviours done in an attempt to fight those thoughts, obsessions and compulsions impair everything function including ability to maintain a job  

Depression

negative state marked by unhappiness, sadness, pessimism, hopefulness and lethargy, coupled with changes in eating and sleeping habits, difficulty concentrating with social withdrawal