lifespan dev unit 2

the brain is a “living sculpture” that…

• forms through interactions between genetically programmed and environmental events throughout the lifespan

• but, goes through most of its fundamental shaping during early years

the ___ and ___ of brain development processes are genetically determined

timing and order

the ___ and ___ of brain development processes are determined by the environment

nature and extent

which neurons are pruned and which neurons are myelinated during synaptogenesis and pruning is determined by what?

environment

the timing of synaptogenesis and pruning is determined by what?

genetically programmed and species wide

why does self regulation emerge during the first 2 years of life but really takes off after 2 years old?

• frontal lobes help us to self-regulate

• at age 2, peak synaptogenesis in the frontal lobe

• after age 2, pruning and refining of the frontal lobe 

• by losing some connections and strengthening others, we get better at self-regulation

if you were to design an intervention to help kids at risk for ADHD, when would you introduce the intervention?

preschool (2-5 years old) as they start to prune their frontal lobe, which is important for self regulation

is brain development a sensitive period?

• yes, the brain is most plastic during early development

• no, the period of early development is not complete at a set age, nor does it begin at birth (the prenatal period is also sensitive)

what did the romanian orphan scenario ask? what did it allow us to estimate?

is early childhood (0 to 2) a sensitive period for cognitive development? allows us to estimate the timing of environmental influences on cognitive development and how much recovery is possible when you remove a child from deprivation at different ages

romanian orphans study design 

• natural experiment

• adopted by UK families following global severe deprivation (GSE) and compared to a control of UK adoptees

  • 0 to 6 months

  • 6 to 24 months

  • 24 to 48 months

• measures:

  • global cognitive index (tests for conceptual development)

  • head circumference (myelination extent)

romanian orphan study results

• developmental delay

  • 85-90% of children who entered the UK were delayed, but…

    • 6 months: no developmental delay (full recovery)

    • 24 to 48 months: 5-7% delayed (most recovered, suggesting high brain plasticity)

    • 24 to 48 months: 20% delayed (improved, but did not fully recover)

  • suggests that the longer you experience deprivation and the older you are when the deprivation is removed → the less likely you are to experience recovery → sensitive 

• head circumference at age 6

  • UK control: 0.5SD below national avg head circum (UK adoptees have smaller head circum than natl avg)

  • 6 months: 1SD below

  • 6 to 24 months: 1.5SD below

  • 24 to 48 months: 2SD below

• head circumference and its relation to cognitive development at age 6

  • 6 months: cognitive ability scores same to control, despite smaller heads, because they are still having synaptogenesis and pruning after the first 6 months (still plastic)

  • cognitive ability declines as you are in deprivation for longer

  • if adopted earlier, heads were bigger → early childhood is a sensitive period for cognitive development

• head circumference and its relation to cognitive development at age 4 and 6

  • those adopted earlier may simply have more time of stimulation after adoption, so they tested the two younger groups at age 4 as well (if the issue was the amount of time in an enriched environment, we would expect to see kids adopted later catch up more by the time they are age 6 compared to age 4)

  • you can’t catch up after age 4

    • 6 months: similar cognitive scores to control for both 4 and 6 years 

    • 6 to 24 months: cognitive scores are lower than 6 months for both 4 and 6 years (identical scores, sustained differences)

    • catch up is only possibly in those early years, and the first 6 months (or 6 months to 2 years) are really important for differences in cognitive functioning

does the romanian orphan study show that cognitive development is a sensitive period?

• no, cognitive improvements are possible after environmental deprivation

• yes, improvements are limited by the extent of deprivation

• yes, full catch up to age-norms are not possible after a certain period

what does SES and cognitive development tell us about when to intervene?

• shows the average rank of cognitive scores of children at different ages who grew up in families of different SES

• found that differences between high and low SES kids emerge around age 2, which is when language develops

  • as they get older, differences widen and nothing about school closes the gap → if you want to intervene, you have to do it early because the differences are smaller

carolina abecedarian project vs. high scope perry preschool project

• both longitudinal, random assignment experiments

• abecedarian (intensive)

  • served 111 children from disadvantaged families

  • high quality center-based program, year round, full day

  • learning games to stimulate development

  • mean age of entry was 4 months then continued until age 8

  • results

    • kids eventually got more education, better jobs, and overall quality of life

      • kept IQ advantage after programmed stopped

    • i.e. Mishay, son of a teen mom, was born into poverty but went to abecedarian and went to college, got a high paying job, etc. → proof that cognitive period begins before public school starts

• perry preschool

  • intensive preschool program for 64 disadvantaged Black children

  • enrolled at 3 years until age 5 (more standard real life age of enrollment)

  • daily 2.5 hour classroom session on weekday mornings, 90 minute home visit by teacher on weekday afternoons

  • length of preschool year was 30 weeks

results of abecedarian and perry on IQ

• abecedarian: IQ affects emerge by age 6, then SUSTAINED above control even at age 20

• perry: IQ increased by age 4-5 then decreased to the control level at age 10

why are abecedarian’s impacts on IQ more longitudinal?

• perry starts at age 3, so exuberant synaptogenesis/arborization for language and visual/audio cortices are done

• abecedarian lasts longer and starts earlier, so kids are being treated as synaptogenesis and myelination is occurring but also

• abecedarian is also more intensive and all day long, so kids get lunch and nutrition

perry’s impact on academic and economic outcomes

• IQ impacts fade for those in perry condition, but later impacts on academic and economic outcomes emerge strongly:

  • ½ of children in perry were likely to be in special education relative to controls

  • more likely to be above 10th percentile in achievement and graduate high school, despite no longlasting change in IQ

  • this is because these students still got the benefits of better executive functioning (attention span, inhibitory control, working memory, planning, etc.)

    • executive functioning begins at age 3 and develops through adolescence

knudsen & heckman article

ROI graph argues that the rate of return is higher when kids are younger (0 to 5 years) and there is a diminishing return for interventions after elementary school

executive functioning includes what components?

• working memory: one’s capacity to retain information in a readily accessible form → facilitates planning, comprehension, reasoning, problem solving skills

• inhibitory control: the ability to inhibit a dominant response to a stimulus and select a more appropriate behavior consistent with goals

• cognitive flexibility: ability to switch between two different concepts or think about multiple concepts at once

what did the chicago school readiness project ask?

how does executive functioning relate to HS graduation rate? can improving self-regulation improve learning?

chicago school readiness project study design

• intervention

  • randomly assigned classrooms to interventions, which trained teachers in self-regulation:

    • clearer rules and routines

    • rewarded positive behavior

    • redirected negative behavior

  • mental health consultants for each classroom:

    • on-site feedback and support

    • stress-reduction workshops for teachers

• measures

  • behavior problems

  • language and math outcomes

  • executive functioning (EF) peg-tapping task: determined by PFC (top-down organization for behavior) which allows shift or maintenance of attention

    • i.e. tap twice when i tap once, etc.

  • effortful control (EC) delay of gratification task: bottom up tasks that regulate spontaneous emotions and distractions 

effortful control follows what kind of organization?

bottom up

executive functioning follows what kind of organization?

top down

chicago school readiness results

• EF and attention/impulsivity increases a year into the program for those in the treatment group, but no impact on EC

• after 1 year, PPVT (receptive language), letters, and math increased more than the self-regulation measures

• over ½ of differences in cognitive outcomes could be explained by self-regulation

  • the classroom climate is more positive → kids pay attention → other kids pay attention and learn from each other

does executive control matter? watts, duncan, & quan, 2018

• used data from a large, cross sectional longitudinal study to replicate the marshmallow experiment, but more diverse, focused on children with less educated moms, and used statistical controls for endogeneity sources like SES

• without controlling → correlation between minutes waited on delay of gratification (DOG) test was significantly correlated with achievement scores at age 15

• when controlling for early background and home environment → correlation cut in ½

• when controlling for 54 month cognitive and behavioral outcomes → no significant correlation

• then why the results of perry?

  • shows that there is something about the enhanced environment of perry that can help kids reduce the stress they experience in their home environment → can lead to better stress regulation, emotional regulation, stress reactivity, classroom approach, etc.

income related gaps in cognitive and social skills for 4 year olds

• showed differences in percentile score for cognitive (literacy, math, language) and behavior (conduct problems, hyperactivity) scores for different income brackets

• found a smaller association between family income and behavioral problems (conduct, hyperactivity) compared to educational scores

family stress model

economic strain → parental anxiety and depression → harsh parenting, conflict → individual differences in neural and endocrine responses to stress → child head risks (depression, drugs, anxiety, diabetes, obesity)

• looked at children of the great depression and replicated in rand conger’s study of iowa farm families

  • kids most impacted by great depression were kids whose parents experienced most economic hardship

  • specifically, with fathers who were depressed and used corporal punishment 

• especially prominent for children who live in povery for first 5 years of life; most at risk

• the link between early experiences → individual differences in stress response is epigenetic (early experiences “get under the skin” and cause inflammation)

  • meany’s rats; parenting quality influences gene expression in regions of the brain important for the stress response

• therefore, decreased stress or increased ability to manage stress could be the factor, more than EC, for better academic outcomes

resource strain and monkey parenting (coplan et al., 1996)

• randomly assigned mother-infant monkeys to 1 of 3 foraging conditions:

  • low foraging: food is readily available

  • variable foraging: unpredictable mixture of two conditions (analogous to economic instability)

  • high foraging: ample food available but requires long periods of searching

• under variable foraging:

  • mother-infant conflict increased

  • affection touching decreased

  • infants showed depression signs, were more fearful

  • as adolescents, infants were more fearful and submissive

• no change under either two conditions

• shows that economic hardship CAUSES disruption in parent-child relationship through its impact on parenting quality

what study showed the family stress model?

resource strain and monkey parenting (coplan et al., 1996)

where is poverty on the bioecological model?

macrosystem

what does it mean to say that language is a species-specific skill?

• we are the only species to have language, although other species can communicate

• language extends beyond communication

what distinguishes linguistic communication from other communication forms, such as nonverbal?

syntax; enables ability for intellectual originality and enables us to express new ideas that can then be understood by others

nativist perspective for language

humans have an innate capacity for language (not tabula rasas) and over time, we unveil this intellectual gift that we have

universal sequence

the sequence of language development is universal

• in all languages (ASL too), infants, toddlers, and children follow the same language learning trajectory (the exact same sequence at the exact same age) → must be something hardwired

• receptive language (understanding) begins first, then nonverbal language, then expressive language (production)

  • by 12 months, most babies can say a few words but can understand more than they can day

receptive language

comprehension; develops earlier than expressive language

• 18 months → understand 50 words

• 4 years → 5560 words

• more concerning if you are delayed in receptive language than expressive language

expressive language

speech production and communication; later and slower development than receptive language

• 18 months → 6 to 12 words, starting with consonants

• 4 years → 1200 words

phoneme

sounds of language (sound fragments)

• languages do not use all phoneme available; if you don’t use a certain phoneme, you can’t distinguish it or hear it separately from the phonemes you do know

• i.e. sheep → sh ee p (3 phonemes)

morpheme

smallest meaningful under of speech that adds information about the semantics of a word

• learned separately from words

• i.e. boy, desire, water → 1 morpheme

• i.e. boyish, desireable → 2 morphemes

• i.e. boyishness, desirability → 3 morphemes

syntax

the grammatical rules that govern how words are composed int meaningful strings

• i.e. dog → dogs, run → running

• mean length utterance: measure of syntactic complexity; avg number of words in a sentence of utterance

• infants never mess up the order of words → supports that language is innate

universal brain development sequence: language

• lang dev is done by 6 years

• exuberant synaptogenesis at 8 to 9 months

• language is a critical period; we can learn it later on, but that builds upon fundamental capacities hardwired at age 6

chomsky’s language acquisition device (LAD)

language skills are etched into the structure of the brain

• left hemisphere

  • lateralization increases with age → increased advanced and efficient processing

  • many brain regions connect for language processing

  • lateralization shows up in the early stages of life and degree of lateralization increases with age

  • as brain prunes, we become more efficient at language production

• but, exceptions:

  • lefties show less left hemisphere activation when listening to speech sounds (more evenly distributed)

  • brain injury people tend to develop less lateralization so other brain areas develop to replace lost functions

janet werker’s infant sound recognition study (1989)

• conditioning procedure that cued infants to look at an interesting sight when they heard a slight change in sounds (conditioned head turned task)

• used infants from english speaking homes and exposed them to english and hindi sounds

• found that the ability to distinguish phonemes disappeared by 1 year of age (could only hear the phonemes in their native language), but before that, they had the capacity to distinguish all phonemes → innate capacity

• evolutionarily adaptive, have to be able to learn any language around in, but lose phonemes to really hone in on native language

susan goldin-mewdow’s spontaneous sign language study (1998)

• studied 4 deaf children in US, 4 in taiwan

• parents had no formal sign language training

• videotaped parent-child convos at age 3 and 4

• results

  • proportion of complex gestures to total gestures was higher for children than parents

  • childrens were the ones to impose basic grammar, build complex sentences, which then had to be learned by the parents (couldn’t have learned language construction from parents, as they were the ones driving it)

  • children’s trajectory of language complexity was steadier and faster than parents

evidence for nativist perspective of language development

1. language milestones are universal

2. specific brain regions are dominant in language comprehension and production

3. infants are born with the ability to differentiate foreign sounds, then unlearn that ability

4. deaf children demonstrate spontaneous syntactic development

behaviorist perspective of language

language exposure and environmental stimuli drives language development

• requires a linguistic environment that stimulates linguistic development

• must hear a word to understand it

• in art, the extent of language learning is a result of input

children’s language varies widely in:

• age they meet language milestones (although the general sequence is universal, timing varies)

• extent of eventual language learning (which is predicted by input from parents)

  • kids of highly responsive moms (above mean number of words and MLU) know at least 50 words sooner than low responsive moms (bottom 10% of number of words and MLU)

  • but, threat of endogeneity (passive gene environment correlation)

rowe et al., 2009

• examined language development from 14 to 16 months of infants born with BI or typically developing (TD)

• examined word types (morphemes) and MLU during parent-child interactions, and how much parent input impacted child word type and MLU

• results

  • word types

    • kids w high input moms learn more words more quickly than both groups with low input moms

    • TD kids with low input moms did around the same as high input moms with BI kids

  • MLU

    • fundamental differences by 14 months in MLU (TD kids have higher syntactic output than BI kids)

    • high input TD kids take off around age 2, low input kids are slower

    • high input BI kids end up the same as high input TD kids

  • shows that language input matters

  • why is syntactic development different from words? why can we make up for BI with regards to syntax and not vocabulary?

    • language input more important for more complex features of language than simpler features of language

evidence for behaviorist perspective of language

1. language input predicts age to reach milestones

2. language input predicts rate of expressive language growth

3. language input matters more for those with biological vulnerabilities

interactionist perspective of language

desire to communicate and the desire for social connection drives language development

• holds that:

  • children learn language to communicate

  • at first, parents play both sides of the conversation and that builds to true linguistic exchanges over time

how do babies learn “signs”?

• a study in 2015 taught infants 18 novel signs that referred to common objects, then randomly assigned infants to learn the signs by video only, video with a caregiver present, caregiver only with book, or no instruction (control)

• If the drive to communication is the key ingredient to kids learning language, parents teaching kids signs with a book should hypothetically produce kids that learn the most signs 

• results

  • in the parent with a book or parent with a video, kids learn more signs than in the video only condition

  • over time (after a 2 week delay), the parent with a book or parent with a video groups didn’t differ much 

  • Video only babies do learn, just learn less

parentese

not baby talk, but how adults talk to babies naturally (sing-songy, high pitch, stretching vowels)

• done in every language in the word (evolutionary)

• instinctive

joint attention

idea that parents and babies are focused on the same things

• babies learn a little from decontextualized language (i.e. overhearing)

• but, talking directly to the baby about a shared context (i.e. a book) is more productive

parentese fosters conversation

• lena devices are earpieces that record number of words said in a conversation

• patricia cool randomly assigned parents to treatment (with the device) or the control

  • if in treatment → played back instances of parentese to parents and explained why it is important for babies (if you perceive yourself doing something, you are more likely to do it as it triggers mirror neurons)

• results:

  • parents in treatment start using more parentese than control groups

  • language production of babies also increases in treatment group

    • parents have more convos with babies and have more conversational turns with babies

    • use of parentese motivates babies to communicate more with parents

  • children produce more vocalization and more words later on in treatment than control

  • at 18 months, the percentage of childs words and vocab was higher in treatment than control

nicaraguan sign language (NSL)

• deaf school in 1979 in which none of the students were previously exposed to other deaf children or taught sign language

• after arrival, students were constructing on each others sign language and created a whole complex language from signs of their own

• teachers attempted to teach them sign language but kids didnt gaf because they wanted to communicate with the other kids, not the teachers

• only phenomenon recorded where an entire new language was created spontaneously

• older students spontaneously developed NSL first, but younger students advanced syntactic structure 

• supports all theories:

  • nativist → children not taught NSL, developed on their own, younger kids better than older kids

  • behaviorist → younger children learned it from other children

  • interactionist → developed in order to communicate with each other, schools social context triggered its development

how much of the world is multilingual?

50%

how many children in the US live in a biingual/multilingual household?

25%

common myths about bilingualism

• a child should learn one language before learning a second

• a child who learns 2 languages won’t feel at home in either and will feel caught between the two cultures

• real bilinguals never mix their languages and doing so indicates a problem

• there is only one way to raise a child so they are bilingual

vocab development for monolingual vs. bilingual babies

• monolingual english speaking babies learn more english

• bilingual english-spanish babies learn less of both languages relative to monolinguals

• learning is the same, except for the spanish-dominant bilinguals who hear less english in general (if you look at total vocab in both languages, its the same)

bilingual cognitive differences

• cognitive benefits throughout the lifespan

• executive functions

  • inhibitory control

  • monitoring

• can inhibit alzheimer’s in older adults

  • older bilinguals had lower rates of mild cognitive impairment and alzheimers, but only if they learned another language in infancy

• can we test this in preverbal infancy>

  • babies either hear all english or both english-spanish

  • if take in two different languages, they have to register which language they are hearing, learn to toggle between them, and encode different patterns of speech

when is memory specificity robust?

memory specificity is robust during infancy (requires exact match between cues at the time of encoding and the cues available at retrival)

• a mismatch at learning and test can decrease memory performance 

• i.e. if you showed elmo and squeezed his nose, then showed a different animal and asked them to do the same thing, babies wont know what to do but older toddlers will know to generalize and squeeze the nose

deferred imitation study

• showed an monolingual and bilingual infants a puppet with a mitten and three target actions:

  • take mitten off, shake it around, put it back on

• memory tasks (30 min after demo)

  • cued recall: doing the mitten thing with the same puppet (same stimuli from demo to test)

  • memory generalization: doing the mitten thing with a new puppet (different stimuli)

• results

  • imitation scores of bilinguals on memory generalization task was better than monolingual babies

  • at 6 months, bilinguals and monolinguals are about the same on imitation score for a change in the stimuli color, but if there is a change in the stimuli color and shape, bilinguals outperform

  • at 18 months, exposure to 2nd language strongly related to imitation score (more exposure → higher imitation score)

• attempted the same study with 24-month old babies

  • delay between demo and test was 24 hours

  • also tested working memory with “spin the pots” (many pots with a ball under one, spun them and asked the kid where the ball was)

  • results:

    • no difference in working memory, cued recall between monolinguals and bilinguals

    • big difference in memory generalization between bilinguals and monolinguals

does it matter which language? (brito et al., 2015)

• could be beneficial to learn two similar languages, since they are harder to distinguish; or, could be better to exposed to more language diversity

• found that it does not matter which languages, just that you learn two different languages

• is learning more languages better?

  • trilingual kids show no cognitive benefit, as they aren’t hearing a sufficient amount of each language to confer a benefit

  • you retain cognitive benefits if you speak both languages (bilingual) within the first 2-3 years, then stop speaking one language

what is happening in the brain of bilinguals?

• selective attention demands of crib bilingualism improves attentional control

• bilingual adults show a greater left PFC activation (lateralization) when taking a cognitive control ANT flanker test (arredondo et al., 2017) → better at selectively attending to information they need to get the answer right

• bilingual children show greater lateralization during cognitive control (arredondo et al., 2017)

what is the biggest change in middle childhood?

full time school

what is concrete operations associated with?

concrete operations (7 to 11), which is associated with more logical and flexible thinking, problem solving skills, etc.

what problem solving skills do we gain in middle childhood?

• operations: children learn to think through or anticipate multiple operations in an action before performing it (plan for a problem that might occur)

• decentration: the ability to focus on several aspects of a problem at a time

• reversibility: the ability to think through a problem in one direction then reverse engineer that problem

what does the conversion task require?

• decentration (must focus on both height and width at once)

• reversibility (think about what happens if you take the new glass and pour it into the original glass)

what happens to attention in middle childhood?

becomes more selective; can focus on main task even when irrelavent stimuli is presented

• i.e. continuous performance test requires participants to respond to pre-designated targets among stimuli that is presented very rapidly, then looks at hit vs. false positive rates

  • older kids have more hit rates and less false positive (less impulsive, more inhibition)

what happens to memory in middle childhood?

• better strategies for memorization

  • rehearsal: i.e. albany, springfield, boston

  • organization: memorizing based on categories

  • elaboration: involves storytelling around a concept; used for complex encoding

• long term memory greatly improves

brain development during middle childhood

• synaptic pruning in frontal lobe → gains in inhibition, planning, attention, memory

• significant pruning is occurring in the frontal cortex

what is ADHD linked to?

reduced electrical and blood flow activity in frontal lobes; most common dx during late elementary or middle school

cognitive gains in middle school are the result of what?

• refinement of synapses in frontal lobes

• logical reasoning, memory, and selective attention work together and strengthen each other

• if you fall behind in middle childhood, it is really hard to catch up academically

how does cognitive skill vary by SES?

• 1970 british birth cohort study tested children at 22, 42, 60, and 120 months → differences in cognition (IQ) in different SES classes emerges at 22 months but increases in gap as time goes on

• if you start at high IQ at a high SES → stay high

• if start low IQ at high SES → increase IQ

• if start at high IQ at low SES → decline IQ

• if start low IQ at low SES → stays low

school quality study (currie and thomas, 2001)

• looked at if we can address the SES achievement gap by improving education

• used same british birth cohort data (longitudinal observational/correlational study) but looked at achievement tests, not IQ, as it is more reflective of learnings from school

• at age 7, there is a gap in reading scores between high and low SES kids that stays constant at age 16

• at age 7, there is a gap in math scores, which increases in size at age 16

• higher school quality is measured by:

  • lower student-teacher ratio

  • higher hours of math instruction

  • percentage of students “suitable” to take comprehensive exams

  • all-girls schools (single sex schools are more beneficial for academic achievement, but only for all girls schools because they have more space to speak up and not feel inferior to their male classmates)

• results

  • high school quality predicted achievement and the gap in achievement for high and low SES kids only for math, not reading

    • reading is strengthen earlier on

    • reading more correlated with home environments

angrist & dynarski et al., 2010

• can attending a high quality charter school (KIPP) improve low SES Students’ test scores?

• used lottery data and compared KIPP lottery winners to loserso n a test (natural experiment)

• KIPP quality measures:

  • “no excuses” school (longer school day/week, highly trained teachers, stricter rules)

  • family engagement is required in student’s education

• results after 1.22 years at KIPP

  • those who got lotteried into KIPP did 0.425SD better on math tests than those who did not, and had a 0.353SD improvement after a year

  • KIPP students scored 0.150SD better on ELA after a year

• shows school quality matters more for math than reading

what aspects of school matters? (chetty et al)

• asked what the impact of a high “value added” teacher is on student test scores

• tracked public school teachers who got assigned different schools each year (natural experiment) and how that impacted test scores at their new and old school

• results

  • adding high VA teacher → test scores increase in that teacher’s grade and stay up

  • removing high VA teacher → test scores decrease in their grade and stay down

  • when they go to another school, they pull the scores up the same as the did in the previous school

• how does a high VA teacher in middle school impact college attendance?

  • students of high VA teachers → more likely to go to college, live in higher income neighborhoods, save more fore retirement (looked at IRS records)

  • percentage of students in college at age 20 has a small effect size (increases slowly with higher value of teacher) BUT is significant

• how does high VA teacher impact future earnings?

  • small effect size again, but significant

why is the impact of school on the frontal cortex so impactful?

• if you are at a good school w organized teachers who are good at their jobs → strengthen connectivity in PFC for executive functioning skills

• may not get smarter in any IQ test, but better planning, organization, conscientiousness, study habits, etc. → learn more

perry preschool impact on academic and economic outcomes

• strong positive correlation between IQ and grades, higher education, earnings

• in middle school, kids are in industry vs. inferiority, and academic achievement is one task that these children aim to master, which can influence their GRIT and effort in school

do i have the internal ability to succeed?

dweck; attributions matter, growth mindset motivates students to work harder

do i have the external resources to succeed?

destin; perceived feasibility of college matters, and open-path mindset motivates children to work harder

dweck’s theory of self-attributions

mastery-orientation disposition: students with this disposition think success results from high effort, and failure is a result of low effort

• these kids know that if you fail, you have to work harder next time

• I.e. her son failed a math test after he said it was easy, he knew the content so poorly he thought he was answering correctly, she told him that he wasn’t mad that he failed, the crucial thing was he fucked off the night before, didn’t think the test was important, and failed by his own hand; if he studied, he could’ve done better

  • the idea is not that they have to get As all the time, but see a link between how much they work and how well they do

learned helplessness: failure results from low ability

• challenging tasks create anxiety

• failure turns students off from that task

dweck’s theory of intelligence

incremental theory: belief that intelligence can be grown and is a changeable characteristic

• mastery disposition

• focus on learning goals

entity theory: belief that intelligence is fixed

• learned helplessness 

• focus on performance goals

where does motivation come from?

theory → mindset → attribution → motivation

entity theory → fixed mindset → learned helplessness → low motivation after a challenge

incremental theory → growth mindset → mastery-orientation disposition → high motivation after a challenge

dweck’s study 1 (2007)

• correlational study giving students a survey about how they thought about math grades and learning, then grouped them into incremental and entity theories of intelligence

• results

  • those with incremental theories → improved math grades between 7th and 8th grade

• but, sources of endogeneity (parents/teachers of these students may be more caring of how they are doing, which inspires an incremental theory)

• focused on math because it is more malleable to school quality and harder for kids in middle school

dweck’s study 2 (2007)

• randomly assigned 99 low achieving students to an in-school intervention or control group

  • treatment included “incremental theory” lessons in which they learned about growing intelligence in a class on brain functioning

  • control included studying the brain structure and function, but no link on how it relates to growing intelligence

• results

  • those in the treatment group increased math grades during 7th grade, the control grades decreases (because of more difficult content)

what encourages a growth mindset?

• praise for hard work when they actually worked hard

• praise for hard work after failing the first time

what does not encourage a growth mindset?

• praise for performance

• praise for hard work when they didnt work hard

what do destin and oyserman (2009) posit?

one reason low income kids have lower achievement is because they think college is financially out of reach, so they exert less effort in school

possible self

a self one might become in the future (path mindset → possible self → academic effort)

• motivates current goal-directed actions

• If you think you have an open path to college (it is feasible for you financially) → your possible self can attend college → higher expectations and effort exerted

• If you think you have a closed path to college → you cannot attend college → what is the point of applying yourself to school, higher education is not your path

destin & oyserman (2009) study 

• randomly assigned students to read an open or closed-path test that either highlighted the availability of financial aid or emphasized how expensive college is

• then, asked what they expected their grades to be in math and english and how much they planned to study 

• results

  • kids assigned to open path texts expected a whole grade higher in math and english than closed path kids

  • kids that read the open path text planned to spend 4x more on homework and studying, but ONLY FOR GIRLS

    • now, something about the classroom is not as stimualting or appealing to boys compared to girls

  • open path text is effective only if a kid is already getting good grades; if you are already failing, being told college is affordable does not change how you view your academic abilities, which is a challenge

would it help to provide financial aid information later on? bettinger & long (2012) study

• randomly assigned low income parents to either receive FAFSA help or information about costs of college nearby

• results

  • if you provide parents actual help → parents more likely to apply for FAFSA, kids more likely to attend college and receive pell grant

  • providing only information did nothing

  • providing information for kids in 8th and 9th grade about the cost of college is super important, but this highlights how families also need help navigating the financial aid system for this to be effective

adolescence as a period of storm and stress?

• yes, for both genders

• due to puberty, hormones, brain development, etc. (hormones alter brain function and stimulate the final stage of brain development)

• due to social stress

• however, does not impact everyone equally; timing matters

  • for girls → early bloomer is more stressful

  • for boys → late bloomers is more stressful

what did mark twain once say about adolescence?

• kids should be shut in a barrel in puberty 

• shows that this is not a recent phenomenon (not a socially constructed period, but a biological phase)

psychopathologies and puberty

• many begin to emerge at puberty

• prevalence rates across genders begin to shift at puberty

  • girls more likely to have depression and EDs

  • boys more likely to engage in substance use and delinquency

• the way symptoms are expressed change at puberty (i.e. pulling someones hair in 2nd grade vs. stealing in high school are both expressions of stress)

• girls have more risky sex, pregnancy, academic problems, depression, body dissatisfaction than boys during adolescence, who have higher substance use and delinquency

puberty

set of hormonal processes that occur in the same sequence and the same way across mammals, marking the transition from childhood to reproductive viability

• causes maturation of primary sex organs, emergence of 2nd sex characteristics (physical signs of sexual and reproductive maturation)

what two hormonal processes trigger the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics?

adrenarche: hypothalamus → pituitary → adrenal glands → adrenal hormones released (HPA axis)

• begins at 6 or 7 until 20 or 21

• results in hair growth, skin oil, skeletal maturation

gonadarche: hypothalamus → pituitary → gonads → sex steroids (HPG axis)

• occurs later in boys than girls (evolutionarily advantageous for girls to be able to reproduce sooner)

  • 10 to 11 for girls, 11 to 12 for boys

  • stimulates LH and FSH in girls, causing weight gain, peirods, and breasts (2nd sex characteristics)

what are gonadal hormones associated with?

psychopathologies

• related to negative affect, behavior problems, aggression

• reorganizes brain regions and increases stress reactivity (increases cortisol)

• so, exacerbates many preexisting psychopathologies or highlights the emergence of new disorders 

social challenges during puberty

• emotional distancing from parents and conflict

  • replace reliable set of relationships with peer and friends (adaptive; want to try and fail at life with peers, who are your same age and will be with you throughout your lifespan)

  • mother-daughter relationships have the most conflict, as getting pregnant is the most consequential fuck up

  • father-daughter relationships have the least conflict

• greater importance of peers and their approval

  • peer pressure

  • can be good, if you surround yourself with good people

• romance

  • less stable than adult relationships, lots of cheating, most likely to be attracted to people way out of your league and experience heartbreak

tanner stages

puberty is divided into 5 stages and you pick which one resembles you

stage 1: little or no signs of maturation (9 to 10)

stage 5: full maturation in terms of 2nd sex characteristics (20 to 21)

• generally at stage 3 during freshman year of HS, 4 when you enter college

• puberty is continuous and gradual

age trends in psychopathology

• gender differences in depression emerge at tanner stage 3 (late middle school/early HS)

• post puberty, girls show more body dissatisfaction than before puberty

• rates of substance use increases 2x by mid puberty and 3x in late puberty