things i dont know

Developmental cascades

Changes in one domain affecting other aspects of development down the line.

Brain basics

The brain is organized into forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain, with distinct functions in each section.

Neurons

Primary functional unit in the brain responsible for transmitting information.

fMRI

detects blood flow in the brain with good spatial resolution but poor temporal resolution.

very sensitive to movement

EEG

Electroencephalography records electrical activity from the scalp with good temporal resolution but poor spatial resolution.

works well with infants because its not sensitive to movement

• NIRS or fNIRS- -(functional) Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

• -detects blood flow and oxygen metabolism changes

• -better temporal resolution than fMRI

• -better spatial resolution than EEG

• -more tolerant to some movement than fMRI

Neurogenesis

Rapid growth of new neurons through mitosis, occurring mainly between the 3rd and 18th week of gestation.

Neural migration

-neurons move to their "proper" location in the brain, taking on specialized functions

Synaptogenesis

synapse is the small space between axons and dendrites that allow the flow of neurotransmitters between neurons

Creation of synapses allowing connections between neurons, starting in the 2nd trimester and continuing throughout life.

• -begins in the 2nd trimester, continues throughout life (to different degrees)

• -surges in first 2-years of life and in adolescence

Myelination

• -begins during 3rd trimester and continues into early adulthood

• -happens for different parts of the brain at different times

• -allows signals to travel down the axon quicker

• Formation of the myelin sheath around axons, beginning in the 3rd trimester and continuing into early adulthood.

• synaptic pruning

• leads to hyperconnectivity

• -neurons are connected that don't need to be connected

pruning removes those superfluous connections

if you don’t use it, you lose it

Plasticity

Brain's ability to change and adapt due to experiences, including experience-expectant and experience-dependent plasticity.

Theory-theory

Developmental theory suggesting internal theories of how the world works influence predictions and understanding of the world.

• Determines predictions you will make about the world

• Kids fail false belief tasks because their theory of the world does not include the idea that people can have false beliefs

• Explanation for why children fail Theory of mind

Approximate Number System

• Mental system that you use to track numerical information without the use of symbols

• Approximately knowing there’s _ many more dots than the number of dots next to it

• Comparing 5 vs. 7 is harder than 5 vs. 10

• Innate, born with the ability to represent numbers this way

• Becomes more automatic and precise as we age

• Lots of species have this ability

Phonological development

→ learning speech sounds

Semantic development

→ learning word meaning

Syntactic development

→ putting words together

Pragmatic development

→ learning communication norms

Microgenetic Study-

Intensive observations over short, frequent intervals

Phenotype-

Observable traits resulting from genotype and environment

Genotype-

Genetic makeup of an organism inherited from parents

Birth Stages

-Contractions open cervix, propel fetus, expel placenta

Explaining language development-

By 10-12 months, their ability to perceive other-language phonemes has decreased.

Some mechanism that may support language learning

• Statistical learning

• Figure out patterns/trends from data

• Whole object bias

• Syntactic bootstrapping

• Mutual exclusivity

• The expectation that an entity has only one name

Contingent Reinforcement-

Reward delivery for desired behavior in infants

Executive function:

A collection of skills involved in controlling and coordinating attention, memory, and other behaviors involved in goal-directed actions

• Inhibitory control

• Cognitive flexibility

• Working memory

• Planning

• Strategies for remembering 

• Self-monitoring

Cognitive flexibility-

is the ability to adapt and switch between different tasks, rules, or strategies in response to changing demands or situations.

OAE

Measures inner ear responses in infants

ABR-

Measures auditory nerve responses in infants

Acuity

: basic developmental timeline

Hearing begins to develop during the prenatal period

By around 36 weeks, sounds heard in utero are remembered after birth!

o Perceptual integration

• When you perceive information from two sense simultaneously (intermodal perception), we sometimes link them together

Habituation-

stage 1: 

repeatedly show a stimulus (or different stimuli that are similar in some way) until the baby looks less

premise: infants look less when they get bored, and they get bored when things are too familiar

used to measure:

-natural preferences

-change detection (discrimination)

-language comprehension

stage 2:

show something different and see what baby's looking is like

premise: if babies notice that it's different, their looking will rebound, because they'll be interested in this novel thing

How are developmental, bioecological, sociocultural theories contrasting piaget

thought piaget ignored important features by focusing only on the child

Dr. Romeo

• Language input and ASD diagnosis in at risk children

• Choices about who to include and exclude from a research study

Dr. Kibbe

• Infants’ memory of object features and categories

• How to interpret looking time in a violation-of-expectation paradigm

Poyraz

• Theory of mind and inhibition (withdrawal from unfamiliar situations and people)

• Using computational modeling as a tool for understanding cognitive development

JULIA LECTURE

• Estimation task for children, before estimating, were told there’s two people with different estimations. 

2 different conditions

• Female over-estimate condition

• Male over-estimate condition

• There is an immediate effect of informant gender

• Kids tend to trust the male informant more than the female informant

Bioecological-

same as information processing , with a clear taxonomy of different kinds of systems

Developmental systems-

emphasizes the systems that a child interacts with, and how that child is impacted by and changes those systems

• These theorists posit that human behavior is the product of a complex, ever-changing system, in which multiple factors affect developmental change; this approach highlights the shared contributions of genes and environment on development and rejects the nativist approach of innate core capacities

Constructivism:

Jean Piaget's observation:

-two people can (and often do) react to the same situation differently- so it can't all be external environment and learned behavior

-His perspective: we need to understand what's in children's minds

-behavior is constructed of one’s external AND internal environment

-Emphasized children's active role in their learning and development. Children play an active role in shaping their learning by incorporating new information into their existing schemas

-Piaget's theory both described and explained development

Evolutionary:

-A way of explaining behaviors in children (and people) and development as being adaptive.

-Over both historical time (evolution, within a species)

-And developmental time (within a child)

Learned behaviors, as a product of innate tendencies that support human survival

-adaptation

Behaviorism (Watson/Skinner):

A scientific approach explaining people's behavior as learned through conditioning

-Reaction against psychodynamic theories focusing on unobservable conflicts, underlying features, and largely untestable predictions

-behaviorism: behavior learned through external factors

-psychodynamic: behavior learned through internal factors or conflict

-Changes in observable behaviors as a product of the environment

Psychodynamic theories

A focus on personality being influenced by unconscious and conscious forces

-Freud's psychosexual stage theory: an emphasis on biological drives

-Erikson's psychosocial stage theory: an emphasis on identity formation through internal conflict and resolution

both are qualitative descriptions

Piaget Cognitive Development: 

• Stage 1) Sensorimotor period

  • Infants’ schemas- cognitive structures that organize information and guide understanding of and actions in the world- are limited to sensory experiences and motor actions (birth-2 years)

• Stage 2) Preoperational period

  • Children are capable of mental representation or the internalization of thought, as seen in the growth of language, symbolic play, deferred imitation, and understanding of object permanence (2-7 years)

• Stage 3) Concrete operational period

  • Children develop logical, flexible, organized, and rational thinking; however, their thinking is limited to concrete experiences (7-11 years)

• Stage 4) Formal operational period

  • Children are capable of abstract and hypothetical thinking, in which logical reasoning and problem-solving move beyond concrete information and experiences (11 years- adulthood) 

Face validity

whether the purpose of the measure is clear to people who look at it (i.e., does it seem like it captures or measures the right thing)

face→ apparent

Construct validity

(sometimes called interval validity): how much the test actually measures what it is supposed to measure

Concurrent validity

How much scores correspond to another test of the same construct at the same time

Predictive validity

How much scores predict on a related or similar test at a later time

External or ecological validity

How much a test can be applied across people or settings

Test-retest reliability

How much an individual receives the same (or similar) score when tested at different times, but under similar conditions

o Developmental relevant distinctions: cross-sectional, longitudinal, microgenetic