Studied by 1 personCross-sectional studies
comparing people of different ages
Longitudinal studies
following people across time
Studies are observed through:
Nature and nurture
Continuity and stages
Stability and change
Nature and nurture
How does our genetic inheritance (our nature) interact with our experiences (our nurture) to influence our development?
Continuity and stages
What parts of development are gradual and continuous, like riding an escalator? What parts change abruptly in separate stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder?
Stability and change
Which of our traits persist through life? How do we change as we age?
Some things stay the same throughout times, and some change
In the future we could think we predicted it from the past, but we can not predict the future
We all change in age, looks, and sometimes personality
“Life requires both stability and change. Stability provides our identity. Change gives us our hope”
Conception
Women are born with eggs, men create sperm during puberty
Sperm has to penetrate egg to fertilize it
“Before half a day elapsed, the egg nucleus and the sperm nucleus fused: The two became one”
Prenatal development
Zygote
Embryo
Fetus
Zygote
Fertilized eggs
One cell become 2, then 4—each just like the first—until this cell division had produced some 100 identical cells within the first week
After 10 days of conception, zygote attaches to the mothers uterine wall
Embryo
When the zygote continues to develop there are two parts, the embryo and the placenta
The embryo is inside and is the soon to be born kid
The placenta is the nutrients and oxygen from mother to embryo
Over 6 weeks, the organs begin to form and heart beats
Fetus
9 weeks, embryo looks like human
Now considered fetus
6 months, organs develop enough to give fetus survival reliability
Fetus can hear
Once born, babies know their mothers voice
Fetal Life: The Dangers
Teratogens can damage an embryo or fetus
Viruses and drugs
When alcohol enters bloodstream, also for fetus
Reduces activity in central nervous system
Alcohol use during pregnancy may prime the woman’s offspring to like alcohol and put them at risk for heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder during their teen years
1 in 10 women report consuming alcohol while pregnant
Alcohol, Smoking, Other drugs, Illnesses, STD’s, Extreme stress
The Competent newborn: inborn skills
automatic reflex responses ideally suited for our survival
Rooting
Sucking
Startle reflex
Grasping reflex
Crying
Habituation gives us a way to ask infants what they see and remember
a decrease in responding with repeated stimulation
Maturation:
Biologically-driven growth and development enabling orderly, sequential changes in behavior
Types of physical development
Brain development
Motor development
Brain development
The developing brain cortex actually overproduces neurons, with the number peaking at 28 weeks
Motor development
Developing brain enables physical coordination
Skills emerge as infants exercise their maturing muscles and nervous system
Babies roll over before they sit unsupported, and they usually crawl before they walk
Brain maturation and infant memory
Infant at Work: Babies only 3 months old can learn that kicking moves a mobile, and they can retain that learning for a month
Difficult to recall before age 4
As children mature, this infantile amnesia wanes, and they become increasingly capable of remembering experiences, even for a year or more
The brain areas underlying memory, such as the hippocampus and frontal lobes, continue to mature during and after adolescence
Cognitive development
Cognition refers to the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Making connections and associations to one another
Name to name or face to name
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
With enough time to process the faces, 5-month-old infants displayed the same brain signature of visual awareness
Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory
Piaget’s core idea was that our intellectual progression reflects an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences
Piaget proposed two more concepts
First, we assimilate new experiences, we interpret them in terms of our current schemas (understandings). Having a simple schema for dog, for example, a toddler may call all four-legged animals dogs.
But as we interact with the world, we also adjust, or accommodate, our schemas to incorporate information provided by new experiences. Thus, the child soon learns that the original dog schema is too broad and accommodates by refining the category
Piaget believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting with it
In the sensorimotor stage, from birth to nearly age 2, babies take in the world through their senses and actions—through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. As their hands and limbs begin to move, they learn to make things happen.
Maturing beyond egocentrism developing a “theory of mind”
Having a theory, not being able to touch it
Using context clues as to what they are thinking
Theory of mind - refers to the ability to understand others’ mental states
Between ages 3 and 4.5, children come to realize that others may hold false beliefs
Empathizing by putting yourself in their mind
Is empathy nature or nurture? - your brain gives you the potential, but up to you to want to
Social development: attachment study
Refers to an emotional tie to another person
Harry Harlo studied attachment
Harlo’s study started by taking baby monkeys and putting a baby blanket in it, monkey got attached
Then studied again but with two artificial monkey mothers, one had bottle and one was made of cloth
This proves that babies do not attach to the mother because of food, but rather because of contact
Origins of attachment
attachment is based on physical affection and comfortable body contact, and not based on being rewarded with food
Babies want to cling to caregivers for dear life
Babies need to have constant sensitive, responsive caregiving
Parent should know what a child needs
Being sensitive is being aware
Being responsive means responding every time
Consistent and loving
Kids just need to feel safe and loved
Basic trust and secure attachment affect out later relationships
Relationships are a place where one can feel safe and loved
Parenting styles
Combination of responsive and demanding
Authoritarian parenting
Permissive parents
Neglectful parenting
Authoritative parents
Authoritarian parenting
Not responsive, not loving
Extremely demanding and controlling
Harsh cruel discipline
Permissive parents
Very loving and very responsive
Not demanding, no structure, no discipline
Kids tend to be irresponsible
Neglectful parenting
Neither responsive nor demanding
Authoritative parents
Both responsive, and demanding
All equalled out
Structure, control, and love
Adolescence (transition period from child to adulthood): Brain development
During puberty, the brain stops automatically adding new connections
During puberty, a lot of selective pruning happens
Continuing growth of myelin
Drugs affect the developing changing brain, can be really bad
Adolescence (transition period from child to adulthood): Frontal lobes are last to rewire
Frontal lobes - involved in planning, judgment, self control
Frontal lobe maturation lags behind that of the emotional limbic system
Adolescents may understand risks and consequences but give more weight to potential thrills and rewards
Their brains are biased toward immediate rewards
Adolescence (parenting and peer relationships): Gowing peer influence
Adolescents are rejecting everything their parents have taught them
More parent-child conflict, usually over minor daily life issues
What their friends are, they often become, and what “everybody’s doing” they often do
The attachment relationship with parents is changed but still needed
Adolescents is not a good time to sever all ties with family
Associative learning: Classical conditioning
Learning to associate to stimuli
How it works: after repeated exposure to two stimuli occurring in sequence, we associate those stimuli with each other.
Result: out natural response and can produce a predictive stimulus
Ex: lightning and thunder
After repetition, lean response: cover ears
Associative learning: Operant conditioning
Learning to associate a behavior and a consequence
Child learns:
Repeat behaviors which were followed by desirable result
Avoid behaviors which were followed by undesirable results
Ex: if i say please then I will get a cookie
Cognitive learning
Occurring new behaviors and information mentally
Occurs:
By observing events and the behavior of others
Watching people and copying their behaviors
By using language to acquire information
School, talking
Ivan Pavlov’s discovery
He was interested in physiological processes
Ivan Pavlov would attach test tubes to dogs mouths to measure the amount of saliva
While studying salivation in dogs, Ivan Pavlov found that salivation from eating food was eventually triggered by what should have been neutral stimuli such as:
just seeing the food.
seeing the dish.
seeing the person who
brought the food.
just hearing that person’s
Footsteps.
Before conditioning:
Neutral stimulus: a stimulus which does not trigger a response
Used the bell → no response
Unconditioned stimulus and response: a stimulus which triggers a response naturally, before/without any conditioning
Dog food → salivating
During conditioning:
Rang bell, gave food, rang bell, gave food, rang bell, gave food, etc
Associating bell with getting food and with food, the dogs salivate
Eventually linked the bell to food
Acquisition
The initial stage of learning/conditioning
What gets “acquired”
The association between a neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
Timing:
Neural stimulus needs to be right before the unconditioned stimulus
Extinction
Diminishing of conditioned response
If the unconditioned response stops appearing with the conditioned stimulus, the conditioned response decreases
Generalization
Refers to the tendency to have conditioned responses triggered by related stimuli
Ex: Pavlov conditioned dogs to drool when rubbed; they then also drooled when scratched
Ex: if you get bit by a dog, so you are scared by a dog, and now all animals
Discrimination
Refers to the ability to only respond to a specific stimuli, preventing generalization
Ex: Pavlov conditioned dogs to drool at bells of a certain pitch; slightly different pitches did not trigger drooling
John B Watson and classical conditioning: Playing with fear
Little Albert experiment
In 1920, 11-month-old Little Albert was not afraid of rats.
John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner then clanged a steel bar every time a rat was presented to Albert
Every time Watson brought out a white rat, Watson would band the steal bar as loud as possible
Child started to associate rats with loud sound
Eventually generalized and became afraid of anything with white fer/hair
Before conditioning:
no fear to white rats
After conditioning:
White rat became conditioned stimulus and reflex is fear
Over time: this little boy became afraid of everything with white fur/hair
How operant conditioning works:
Do more of the behaviors of the consequence we want
Ex: We may smile more at work after this repeatedly gets us bigger tips.
Ex: We learn how to ride a bike using the strategies that don’t make us crash.
Ex: training an animal to do something
How it works: An act of chosen behavior is followed by a reward or punitive feedback from the environment.
Results: Reinforced behavior is more likely to happen again
Punished behavior is less likely to be tried again
Not deep emotion - observable behaviors and environmental stimuli
Thorndike’s law of effect
Thorndike’s law of effect
Build a cat box with multiple different contraptions for the cat, with one escape door
The door opens by do a particular action
Put cat in puzzle box, put food on the outside, cat wanted to escape
What will happen the second time you put the cat in the box after escaping the first time
The cat learned that lever = escape and food
The law of effect: behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and behaviors are more likely to change
B.F. Skinner: the operant chamber
Mimicked it off of Thorndike's experiment
The operant chamber (“skinner box”) allowed detailed tracking of rats behavior change in response to different rates of reinforcements
Bar the can be pressed down and food comes down
Tried multiple times to get food
Push lever down 10 times, 20 times, then get food
Reinforcement
Any consequence of a behavior that makes it more likely to happen again
Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows
Positive reinforcement
Negative reinforcement
Shaping behavior
Immediate and delayed reinforcement
How often should we reinforce?
Continuous reinforcement
Partial/intermittent reinforcement:
Positive reinforcement
Adding something to increase a behavior
Ex: giving tips, cookies
Negative reinforcement
Taking away something (annoying/unpleasant) to increase a behavior
Ex: take away something annoying (tapping) to increase study behavior
Shaping behavior
A way to use reinforcement
Reinforcement in baby steps
When a creature is not likely to randomly perform exactly the behavior you are trying to teach, you can reward any behavior that comes close to the desire behavior
Ex: want to get a dolphin to jump up high.
Start by having the dolphin swim through the hoop under water then quickly give fish, then keep going up until out of water
Immediate and delayed reinforcement
A rat needs to be reinforced immediately after performing the desired behavior
Animals need immediate
Humans do respond to delayed reinforcers
Ex: start class in january and get grade in may
Ex: paycheck
The ability to delay gratification is associated with achievement and social competence
People who want immediate gratification will not achieve much in life
How often should we reinforce?: Continuous reinforcement
Reward every time when start to teach a new behavior
But, if you stop rewarding, the behavior can stop
How often should we reinforce?:
Partial/intermittent reinforcement
the target behavior takes longer to be acquired/established but persists longer without reward
Ex: slot machines and very low chance
Ex: mom reinforcing a kid with a candy bar from a tantrum
He won't quit trying
More likely to stick around
Punishment
Any consequence that decreases the frequency of the behavior it follows
Positive punishment
Negative punishment
When is punishment effective?
Positive punishment
Adding something (unpleasant) to decrease a behavior
Ex: child spanking, animal electric shock
Negative punishment
Taking something (pleasant) away to decrease a behavior
Ex: take away video games
When is punishment effective?
Can not punish animals because they don’t learn from that
Over their heads
Works for humans when swift and sure
Ex: hand in fire will hurt immediate every time
It works less well when the only consequence we encounter is a distant, delayed, possible treat
Severity of the punishment
NOT HELPFUL as making the punishments immediate and certain
Problems with physical punishment
Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten
Physical punishment does not replace the unwanted behavior
Punishment teaches discrimination among situations
Punishment can teach fear
Kids can not process logically what you are saying to them
Physical punishment models aggression as a method of dealing with problems
Ex: my mom hits me when she is mad, so i can hit someone lower than me when i'm mad
Punishment focuses on what NOT to do, which does not guide people to a desired behavior
Even if understandable behaviors do stop, another problem behavior may emerge that serves the same purpose, especially if no replacement behaviors are taught and reinforces
Ex: preschoolers push and hurt each other unintentionally
Applications of operant conditioning: School and parenting
Rewarding small improvements works better than expecting complete success, and also works better than punishing problem behaviors.
Notice people doing something right and affirm them for it.
Notice more of the good than bad
Reward can be attention or praise, not only food
Applications of operant conditioning: Sports
Athletes improve most in the shaping approach.
Reinforce small successes and then gradually increase challenges.
Baby steps
Applications of operant conditioning: Work
Some companies make pay a function of performance or company profit rather than seniority.
Reward specific, achievable behaviors, not vaguely defined “merit.”
Ex: make a specific amount of sales and get reward
Self improvement:
State realistic goal & announce it
How/when/where will you work towards your goal
Monitor how often you engage in the designed behavior
Reinforce desired behavior
Reduce the rewards gradually
Role of biology in conditioning: Biology limits on classical conditioning
Can any natural response be conditioned to any neutral stimulus?
Preparedness: Each species has a biological predisposition to learn associations that have a survival value
Ex: associate taste & nausea
Ex: If you become violently ill 4 hours after eating contaminated oysters, you will probably develop an aversion to the TASTE of oysters more readily than to the sight of the restaurant, its plates, the people you were with, the music you heard there, etc.
Role of biology in conditioning: Biology limits on operant conditioning
Will a pigeon peck to obtain food?
Will it flap its wings to obtain food?
Will it peck to avoid a shock?
Will it flap its wings to avoid a shock?
Organisms are predisposed to learn associations that are naturally adaptive
Cognitive processes: In classical conditioning
Knowing that our reactions are caused by conditioning give us the option of mentally breaking the association
Cognitive processes: In operant conditioning
Humans can respond to delayed reinforcers such as a paycheck
Humans can set behavioral goals for self & otters and plan their own reinforcement
Observational learning:
Learn by observing others
Modeling: process of observing and maintaining a specific behavior
By watching models we expect vicarious reinforcement and vicarious punishment
Mirroring in the brain
When we watch others doing out being strung mirror neurons fire in patterns that would fire if we were doing the action or having the feeling ourselves
Our brains stimulate and vicariously exercises what we observe
From mirroring to imitation
In humans, imitation is pervasive
Children will overimitate
Routinely copy adult behaviors that have functions or reward
Theory of mind humaves have brains that support
Applications of observational learning
People modeling of prosocial behaviors can have prosocial effects
People modeling of antisocial behaviors can have antisocial effects
Under stress, we do what has been modeled for us
Models in real life and in media
Why do we have memory?
If we don’t have memory we don't have a life
We wont remember friends, family, home
Culture
Skills, knowledge
Language
Past joys, pains
What defines me?
Studying memory
Memory refers to the persistence of learning over time, through the encoding, storage and retrieval of information.
Persistence of learning over time
Coding - bringing it in
Storage - keeping it there
Retraval - bringing it back to mind when needed
3 behaviors that show memory is functioning:
Recall
Ex: tests
Recognition
Relearning
Should be easier and happen quicker
How does memory work
Encoding → storage → retrieval
exception to the computer analogy:
Our memories are less literal and more fragile
Out brains process many things simultaneously (same things unconsciously) by means of parallel processing
Model of memory formation: The Atkinson-shiffrin model
Stimuli are recorded by our senses and held briefly in sensory memory
Some of this information is processed into short term memory and encoded through rehearsal
Information then moves into long term memory where it can retrieve later
Need to put effort into long term
Modifying the model:
More goes on in short-term memory besides rehearsal; this is now called working memory.
Some information goes straight from sensory experience into long-term memory; this is automatic processing.
Working memory: functions
What you are thinking and processing right now
Gets better as we get older
It hold information not just to rehearse it , but to actively process it
Makes sense of new input and links it with long term memories
Working memory capacity appears to reflect intelligence level
Those who can juggle the most mental bald tend to exhibit high intelligence and ability to maintain focus
Encoding memories
Dual track memory
Automatic processing and implicit memories
Effortful processing and explicit memories
Dual track memory
Processing
Effortful - Conscious and on purpose memory
Automatic - unconscious, no effort
Implicit vs explicit memories
Explicit memories
Declarative memories
Facts and experiences that we can consciously know and recall
Acquired through conscious effortful processing
(studying, rehearing, thinking, processing)
Implicit memories
Some information skips the conscious coding and goes straight to storage
Memories are typically formed through automatic processing
Automatic processing and implicit memories
Procedural memory
Automatic skills
Classically conditioned associations
Conditioned to think a way
Information about space
Remember based on visualization on page
Information about time
Information about frequency
Effortful processing and explicit memories
Without active processing, short term memories will disappear
Effortful processing strategies boost our ability to form new memories
Ex: chunking (grouping), mnemonics, hierarchies
Strategies:
Distributed practice
Testing effect
Deep/semantic processing
Making information personally meaningful
Distributed practice
The spacing effect:
You retain more information over time
Those who learn quickly, forget quickly
Testing effect
Repeated self testing and answering
Deep/semantic processing
The deeper (more meaningful) the processing, the better out retention
“Shallow” processing-
Memorizing the appearance or sound of words
Making information personally meaningful
Rephrase what you see and hear into meaningful terms
Most people excel at remembering personally relevant information
Memory storage:
Memories are NOT in isolated files, but are in overlapping neural networks, distributed throughout the brain.
No year one, year two, etc
Some brain cells that fire when we experience something fire again when we recall it
Explicit memory processing
The network that processes and stores new explicit memories including your frontal lobes and hippocampus
Need a functioning hippocampus
Events and facts are held in the hippocampus for a couple of days before moving to the cortex for long term storage = memory consolidation
Much of this consolidation occurs during sleep
A lot of serious memory work is happening when sleeping
Implicit memory processing
The cerebellum forms and stores the implicit memories created by classical conditioning
The basalganglia is involved, motor skills for memory
The amygdala, emotions and memory: How do your emotions affect memory processing?
Emotions can trigger a rise in stress hormones
Stress triggers the amygdala Amygdala processes strong and mostly hard emotions
The amygdala increases memory forming activity so the brain will “tag” these memories as important
More likely to remember an event if stressed or scared
As a result: the memories are stored with more sensory and emotional details
Not just the objective facts
Traumatic memories are well remembered
Because we do not want them to happen again
Brain processing of memory: synaptic changes
If you form a memory, can I physically see it in your brain?
Yes, neurons are talking to each other
When sea slugs or people form memories, their neurons release neurotransmitters across the synapses
(sea slugs are commonly used to test)
With repetition, the synapses undergo long-term potentiation (LTP) = signals are sent across the synapse more efficiently
The more the communication across the synapses happens, the more connections and communications they have
More receptor sites, more connections
Memory retrieval
Memory is stored as a web of associations
The best retrieval cues come from associations we form at the time we encode a memory
Retrieval cues can bring up different memories if similar with another
The power of priming
When mind is on one thing, it can’t stop to think of another thing
Priming triggers a thread of associations and can affect us unconsciously
Study: people primed with money related words were less likely to then help another person
Study: priming with an image of Santa Clause led kids to share more candy
Santa is generous
Study: people primed with a missing child poster then misinterpreted ambiguous adult-child interactions as kidnapping
Context dependent memory
Dependent on the environment
Encoding specificity principle
Where specifically did you encode
Cues & contexts specific to a memory will be most effective in helping us recall it
If you retrieved it on land, it will reappear on land
If you retrieved it underwater, it will reappear underwater
State dependent memory
Memories can be ties to the physiological or emotional state we were in when we formed the memory
Mood congruent theory
When you are in a good mood, you retrieve good memories
When you are in a bad mood, you retrieve bad memories
What leads to forgetting?
Do it all the time and no weird meaning to it
Brain damage
Specific parts and can not remember
Encoding failure
Common reason
You are bombarded with information and you don’t pay attention to most of it, so you don’t encode it
Storage decay
You have no use for it anymore
Use it or lose it
Retrieval failure
Tip of the tongue phenomenon
A clue helps retrieve it
NOT REPRESSION - you need to keep working on a memory to remember it
Why is our memory full of errors
We infer out past from stored information PLUS what we later imagined, expected, saw, and heard
We have a memory we create and what goes into the memory is what happened and pictures, what parents said, what you imagined
When we “replay” a memory, we often replace the original with a modified version
Memories can be continuously revised → reconsolidation
Memory is not perfect
Misinformation & imagination effect
Study: two groups of participants watched a video of a car crash
Group 1: Participants watched a video of a minor car accident. The participants were then asked, “How fast were cars going when they hit each other?”
Actual accident
Group 2: Those who were asked, “...when the cars smashed into each other?” reported higher speeds and remembered broken glass that wasn’t there.
Misremembered accident
Misleading question
Even repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories
Misattribution
Have you ever discussed a childhood memory with a family member only to find that the memory was:
from a movie you saw, or book you read?
from a story someone told you about your childhood, but they were kidding?
from a dream you used to have?
from a sibling’s experience?
Source amnesia
Source Amnesia
Amnesia about the source of the information
Misattributing the source to your own experience
Discerning true & false memories
Overconfidence: people are overconfident about their fallible memories
Unreal memories feel like real memories
It’s hard to separate false memories from real ones
You can remember the gist of it but not the specific details
Constructed memories and children
Imagined events are hard to differentiate from experienced events
When interviewing kids, DO NOT LEAD; be neutral and non suggestive in your question
Little kids do not give accurate information
Recalling memory about sexual abuse
Traumatic memories lead to vivid, persistent, and haunting memories
“Definition” of intelligence
Intelligence can be defined as “whatever intelligence tests measure.”
Nothing more
Usually school smarts
Generate scores; allows us to compare individuals
When everyone gets a score, we can compare and rank people
Ex: sat & act: measures your potential to get into a college
Note
Flashcard